


Burn the Boats

by eek_a_tron



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Basically Various Loaded Feels, Canon Compliant, Castaway Fic, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Desert Island Schemes, F/M, Feels, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, POV Rey (Star Wars), Possessive Behavior, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reylo (I Keep Wavering Back and Forth Actually), Reylo (Mostly), Reylo - Freeform, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn By Necessity, Trapped Alone Together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 69,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13699128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eek_a_tron/pseuds/eek_a_tron
Summary: The force hummed.  Rey felt its pull.Oh, not right now.Oh, go away.***About a year after the events of The Last Jedi, Rey still struggles to sort out her place in all this.  Her force-bond with Kylo Ren isn't making that easy.  She's going to need a better strategy.





	1. Snow

            Air rushed into her lungs.  Slowly, she breathed back out. 

_Cold._

            Rey stood at the top of a soaring hill on Hoth-4, her eyes closed beneath an almost comically-oversized pair of goggles.  She remained utterly still, meditating, searching — above all, she restrained herself from using the full weight of the force surrounding her.  The snow-covered landscape reverberated with everything that the sensation of coldness implied. 

            One of the four planets that bordered the Hoth of old Rebel lore, Hoth-4 was less icy and more forested than its namesake.  It was still incredibly cold, though.

            Melting ice dripped rhythmically off of the trees in the forest far below her.   _No._  Rey’s brows knit; she wouldn’t focus on that.  Snowy creatures, both small and immense, attempted to shake their coats dry.  _No._ She wouldn’t reach out to examine their energy.  Hot springs flickered into her senses, their warm steam forming a mist over a series of tiered pools that looked entirely too soothing for their own good.  _Oh, DEFINITELY no._  Rey refused to think about how tired she felt, or how much her muscles ached to be warm and clean and calm. 

 _Focus just enough, and no more_ , she told herself.  She carefully reached out with her senses — careful, careful — she couldn’t reach beyond what she needed to know.  No longer could she dive too far into the force’s ever-thrumming thread, neither too heavily or too long.

            She could no longer let him in.

 _Snow … rocks … hot springs … a metallic space inside the mountain … there!_ Under the giant goggles, her eyes flew open.  From her high vantage point she’d been able to sense the long-abandoned Rebel Alliance base located here, hidden inside a nearby mountain.  It seemed to be remarkably preserved, and the hot springs she’d sensed earlier were located somewhere within.  That’s odd, Rey thought, chewing warily at one corner of her lips.   How could hot springs be situated _inside_ of a fortified structure?

            In any case, she’d found what they came for.  Now she just had to stop _feeling_ everything, and anything, and nothing _…_ Rey shook herself sternly and closed her eyes again.  Purposefully muting her connection to the force hadn’t yet become automatic.

**_Beautiful …_ **

            Rey frowned slightly and opened one eye.  It _was_ beautiful here, beautiful but cold.  A light snow had begun to fall.  She pawed its melting wetness from her unwieldy goggles. They didn’t fit her face at all; she’d borrowed them from Finn, who’d borrowed them from Rose, who’d borrowed them from someone unknown, on and on, probably down to some unknown Rebel Alliance fighter stationed on a similarly-snowy base planet, years or decades or lifetimes ago.  Did _anyone_ in the Resistance own anything new?  Even their ideas were borrowed, of a sort, passed down from the old Rebel Alliance.

            Sometimes borrowing was better, Rey mused, mulling over the usual jumble of thoughts in her scavenging-oriented mind.  She pulled the hood of her long winter cape over her head and fiddled with her scarf, winding it more securely around her neck.  Besides, who cared if the Resistance’s ideas were old and borrowed?  They were _meant_ to be passed down, and destined to be shared.  A family shared things, or so she imagined.  Rey rather fancied the idea.  After a lifetime of scrapping, stealing, and surviving, to borrow willingly was a new treat for her — even _if_ the enormous goggles continued to put up a struggle over her too-small nose.

            “Rey?  We’re all done refueling here,” Finn’s voice crackled over her comlink, startling Rey out of her goggle-adjusting reverie.  She could hear BB-8 chirping in the background. 

            Finn still wasn’t the best of pilots, but he _was_ a fast learner.  By now, practically a year after the Resistance’s near-demolition on Crait, Finn had forced himself to learn how to handle a small shuttle.  It helped that he had BB-8’s guidance inside the cockpit, of course, as well as Poe Dameron acting as mission back-up in orbit above Hoth-4.

            Rey raised the comlink to her lips. “Finn, I found the base.”

            “Why am I not surprised?” Finn asked, clearly smiling and shaking his head into the comlink.  “You think the data-pod’s there?” 

            Their mission was relatively straightforward.  Only scattered information remained about the former Rebel Alliance base hidden in the mountains of Hoth-4, yet the Resistance had recently discovered that a data-pod was likely stored inside — a pod loaded with potentially-compromising information on some of the old Alliance’s most far-flung members.  A small, hopefully unnoticeable party needed to hack their way into the base, locate the data-pod, and remove it before the First Order could get wind of anything amiss.

            “I _know_ the data-pod’s there,” Rey murmured, distracted, still fiddling with the goggles which were becoming heavier by the moment.  Most of the old allies compromised by the pod would be long dead by now, but some of those ancient names could still be scattered across the galaxy — in hiding, most likely.  Old information was often dangerous.

            “I hope those hidden ghosts are worth all this fuss,” Finn mumbled.  Rey could sense his worry.

            “The base isn’t far,” she assured him, gently, “and it shouldn’t be a struggle — blast!”  The offending goggles chose _this_ moment to escape by slipping down Rey’s face, bumping into the comlink in her hands with a hard, heavy THUNK _._  

            The comlink fizzled out.  

            “Blast it!” Rey cried again, louder this time, clicking the communicator back and forth.  She used the force to wrest the goggles off her neck in frustration.  With one sharp hand motion, her fingers flew open, and the goggles sailed down the hillside, plumping into a large snowbank some distance away. 

**_So much for sharing …_ **

            Rey looked around, feeling stupid.  What an overreaction.  At least nobody had seen it; the snowy landscape remained silent and witness-free, save for the dripping of snow from the trees.  She tinkered mechanically with the comlink for a few moments, turning the dials this way, a bent wire another way.  It eventually fizzled back to life, Finn’s voice still crackling over BB-8’s robotic alarms: “Rey!  What’s wrong?  Hey!”

            “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she comlinked back, embarrassed. “Just have to, uh, pick up your goggles, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

            “Well, that’s a relief.  Make sure you get those vintage peepers back to me, Rey, or I’ll catch it from Rose.”  She could hear Finn clicking switches on the shuttle. “We’re headed your way.  Let’s hack inside that base, rest up, and get back home before we freeze.”

 _Home._ “Don’t worry, Finn,” Rey smiled, still testing out a sort of careful playfulness with her Resistance comrades, “I didn’t sense any snow monsters out here.”

            A pause.

            “Okay, _no one_ told me _anything_ about _any_ monsters!” Finn’s dismayed outrage was drowned out by the comlink’s fizzling-over-distance noises and BB-8’s exasperated, you-silly-human, she-was-only-teasing-you beeping in the background.

            Rey giggled in spite of herself.  The sound echoed over the hillside, a pearly sing-song of light. 

            Let’s get back _home_ , Finn had said.  The word was still foreign to Rey.  She no longer had to get back home to Jakku; she was, to use her own carefully-practiced phrase, currently without residence.  She moved from ship to ship, planet to planet, almost like a proper spacer now.  Yet she had friends, and a cause, and plenty of new-fangled experiences to savor, far from her former desert prison. 

            Wasn’t that enough?  Why _shouldn’t_ it be enough? 

 **_Still unsure, still lonely … somehow, still afraid to leave …_ **

            She exhaled sharply, her breath visible in the cold.  Shields up.  Focus.

            The borrowed goggles glinted accusingly from the snowbank where she’d thrown them below.  She could force-summon them over to her, but Rey was already feeling the insistent hum of the force rising ever more loudly in her head.  It seemed that she’d already tapped into it too much today.  Instead, she picked a careful route down the snowy slope, taking care on the as-yet-unfamiliar ground. 

            How easily her old sand-sled would have conquered this frozen hill!  For a desert-dweller like herself, snow remained both a marvel and a curse.  Its coldness sparked darker memories, too, of a battle in another snowy forest that now seemed ages ago.

            The force hummed.  Rey felt its pull.

            Oh, not right now. 

            Oh, go away.

            She tried to concentrate on the still-too-distant echo of the shuttle ... the crunch of the snow as she picked her way over it ... the tips of green trees and their long, dark shadows ... 

_Long._

_Dark._

_Shadows._

            Quickly, casually, she grabbed up Finn’s goggles from where they lay, knocking the snow off of them.  She glanced at the sky; no shuttle yet.  Slow down, Finn, Rey pleaded silently, closing her mind, willing the comlink off.  Stay back.  Wait.

            Even with her back turned to him, she could sense the longest, darkest shadow she had ever known standing several lengths from her, seeing her, as she could see him — well, she _would_ see him, if she’d only turn to look at him.  Which she didn’t.  Instead, she merely felt Kylo Ren staring daggers into her back.  He was there and not there, present yet not present.  Their bond in the force couldn’t be broken, or so it seemed, much to Rey’s ever-guarded dismay.

            Study or struggle as she might, she could never seem to find the end of that particular knot.


	2. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How long are you going to waste your powers on ignoring me?” His voice was low. As usual, his measured tone just barely veiled his temper. 
> 
> She rolled her eyes.
> 
> “How long do you think I’ll let you keep me out?” he growled, lower still, temper rising.

            “Rey,” Kylo said, finally.  His voice was demanding.  Dangerous.  Impatient.

            Rey stood silently, clenching and unclenching the oversized goggle-band in one hand.

            “Look at me.”

            She didn’t.

            “How long are you going to waste your powers on ignoring me?”  His voice was low.  As usual, his measured tone just barely veiled his temper. 

            She rolled her eyes.

            “How long do you think I’ll let you keep me out?” he growled, lower still, temper rising.

            A light snow was still falling.  _Sod_ the snow, forever, Rey thought, suddenly irritated, struggling to keep her sinister memories of the forest on Starkiller Base away. 

            “You’re angry,” he noted.  Still studying her.  “You.  You’re angry at _me_.”

            She calmed herself, walled him off from her mind in the force.

            “I made you an offer,” Kylo went on, “which you refused, and _you’re_ angry at _me_.”  His tone was both petulant and disbelieving — and tired, Rey realized suddenly.  He was tired of being ignored.  He seemed physically tired, too, as though he hadn’t been sleeping.  As though he was too angry to sleep. 

            Typical. 

            She could sense him clenching a fist, far tighter than she clenched the goggles.  His darkness pressed up against her mental shields, always testing their foundations, forever trying to see into her head.  “This is _your_ fault,” he hissed.  “I gave you a chance.” 

            Rey’s throat strained in spite of herself.  Sod it.  She had a right to her _own_ barely-veiled rage.  “I gave _you_ a chance, monster!” she hissed back.  Regret instantly flooded the space between them — the feeling was hers, and the regret was over having responded to him at all.

            “Ah.”  She sensed a taut vein in Kylo’s neck, pulsing once.  Twice.  “At long last, she speaks.”  His tone was blank yet acidic.  She heard him take a step closer, but only one.  In the bond, it sounded as though he walked on metal instead of crunching snow.

            Rey gritted her teeth.  She’d been doing so well, too.  In fact, Rey hadn’t spoken outright to Kylo Ren during his force-bond appearances for months on end.  It had been a year since their fight in Snoke’s throne room, where she’d rejected him, and several months since she’d said a blasted word to him at all.  That certainly hadn’t stopped him from appearing, though!  Despite Snoke’s apparent death, the bond between them remained relentless yet irregular.  Kylo still appeared to her, while Rey appeared to him, off and on, seemingly at random.  He appeared while she meditated.  She popped in when he practiced lightsaber techniques.  He lurked nearby while she walked, while she absorbed new worlds she’d never seen before.  She stood regarding him coolly while he stalked around, while he glowered at new worlds he didn’t much care for in the first place. 

            Insofar, they were always alone when the bond clicked on.

            Alone but bound, within the force.

_Of course_ Rey had started ignoring Kylo whenever he force-materialized, feeling how much it irritated him.  And _of course_ she’d started trying to block him out, which enraged him practically beyond all comprehension.  She’d been reading — or rather, practically devouring — Luke’s ancient Jedi books in secret.  She’d been growing stronger, willing herself into a kind of oddly mindful, wild-yet-wary scholarship.  Yet despite her greater potency in the light, it seemed that using _less_ of the force was key to keeping Kylo at bay in their bond.  Her attempts thus far had seemed to work; his bond-appearances had become less frequent lately.

            All the same, here he was, simmering away.  She sensed a childish satisfaction wafting off of him at finally making her talk, as well as his continued fury that she still wouldn’t look at or defer to him.  She felt instinctively, too, that like her, Kylo must have _also_ found secret ways to grow stronger in the force; she’d be a fool to think otherwise.  Rey was many things: determined, experimental, full of starfire and hope, burdened by a past that still threatened to wash her away in its long, lonely wake, but she was no one’s fool.

            Gods, she couldn’t even imagine how much the dark side of him must hate that.

            Frustrated that she’d broken her own silence, Rey stubbornly continued facing away from him.  Kylo made a wide circle, trying to come face-to-face with her, but she wasn’t about to let him.  Instead, rebelliously, she circled too, on her heel, keeping her back to him and her face shrouded inside the hood of her long light cloak.

            He stopped circling, exhaling sharply in frustration.  He waited a moment — Kylo was nothing if not reliant on thinly-controlled pauses — before putting a demanding question to her: “Are you making progress in your Jedi training?”

            Rey turned in surprise, both hollow and fuming.  _Oh, sod it._   She’d looked right at him.

            His eyes were flickering.  Their otherwise impassive gaze roved over Rey’s clenched jaw, her long cloak, her thick grey scarf.  She glared back at him, her chin jutting out, knowing he couldn’t sense anything incriminating at the moment, at least not in her head.  “I’m no Jedi,” she replied.  Then, icily, pointedly, she floated him one thought over the force-controlled wall between them: _You’ve seen to that._

            “You’re _dressing_ like a Jedi,” he pointed out, his lips pursing slightly, ignoring her mental dig.  He ran an interrogative glance over her voluminous hooded cloak.

            Feeling insolent, Rey ran a glance of her own over Kylo’s attire.  He’d given up the mask long ago, and he wasn’t hooded at the moment, but he wore the old black cloak, the same black tunic, and the eternally-matching black gloves.  His face remained streaked with her rather wicked scar, too.  “ _You’re_ still trussed up like a Sith,” said she, giving the goggles clutched in her hand a light, almost unbidden swing.

            Kylo raised an eyebrow.  She felt his surprise, just barely hidden.  He had a wall of his own, after all.  “I’m not a Sith.”

            “Is that so?”  She made her tone sound indifferent, the exact opposite of the emotions crashing around in her head.  Rey looked skyward, glancing at the falling snow, guardedly scanning the clouds.  According to the strange force-magic of their bond, Kylo could only see the snow where it fell on her; he couldn’t see the sky, the shuttle, or Finn — oh gods, Finn!  Rey would _not_ allow her best friend to suffer any more snow-forest nightmares.  Never again. 

            Kylo Ren had to leave.  She’d get him to leave.

            Rey felt the sudden tug of Kylo’s irritation.  At her.  Over her.  After all, she was looking away again, looking elsewhere, anywhere but at him.  Shutting him out.  Always defying him.  She sensed something deeper, too ... what was it ... but Kylo shifted, hiding whatever it was, and instead pushed an inquest over his mental wall: **_Tell me what you know about the Sith._**

            “I’ve just heard some old stories,” Rey replied, starting to walk away, back down the hill.  Nonchalant.  Unaffected.  Nothing to sense here.  “You can’t really scavenge without learning a few myths along the way.”

            “You’re somewhere cold,” Kylo declared, seemingly out of the blue.  She felt his eyes on her back.  He was in full inquisition-mode now.  “It’s snowing there.  Is the Resistance on Hays Minor?  Ilium?”

            “ _Tch_ , a girl wears a warm scarf and everything gets to be a mystery,” Rey made herself coo sarcastically.  She kept walking, quite aware that her roguish tone sounded all too similar to someone she’d lost — or rather, to someone they’d _both_ lost.

            “I will find you, you know.”

            Rey froze.  Turned.  Stared at him; glared at him.

            Kylo’s dark eyes glimmered in his otherwise expressionless face.  “I’ll find out where you are.  I’ll find out where the Resistance is, and I’ll find out what you’re doing.  You know I will.”

            “Aren’t you,” said she, carefully, “already here?  Haunting me?”  Rey could hear the distant hum of Finn’s shuttle now.

            The dark glimmer in Kylo’s eyes shifted into an open glare that overtook her own.  They both knew the force-bond was different from actually being in the same place.  They were close but far, here but there.  They’d touched hands in the bond before, once, just once, but when they’d fought together, in person, side by side, gloriously, oddly, madly, it was different.

            All at once, a clear vision of Rey rejecting Kylo’s offer — after the fighting stopped, after their red rush of fury, fire, cleansing light and dark camaraderie snuffed itself out — sprang to life in the bond-senses between them.

**_Your parents were filthy junk traders, sold you off for drinking money …  you come from nothing; you're nothing … but not to me … join me … please …_ **

            Rey could still sense tears welling somewhere behind her eyes.  She shoved at the vision’s edges, willing the dreadful hum of the force to stop showing it to her for what seemed like the umpteenth time.  In her distraction, she whirled on Kylo with accusing suddenness.  “How did you know about my parents?” she demanded.

            “I looked into it.”  His voice was measured.  Nonchalant.  Nothing to sense here.

            Rey’s eyes widened, narrowed.  She knew that trick.  “Why?” she implored, harder this time, slowly realizing that she wasn’t the only one who had shoved this particular vision away for the umpteenth time. 

            He exhaled — a snort.  He was trying to be derisive.  He didn’t answer her. 

            The transformative skirmish in Snoke’s throne room felt like it happened ages ago, yet through the force-bond, it felt all too present, all too now.  Confused, worried, distracted, and filled with an anger that did not seem entirely her own, Rey found herself inundated with one singular, white-hot emotion: _I could kill Kylo Ren if he was physically near, now.  I could kill him, for both of the Solos._

            Kylo quirked a brow, even as his lips tightened. “Could you?” 

            She glared, realizing her thoughts had been too emotional, too unguarded.  “Why not?” she threw at him.  “You’ve tried to kill me.  More than once.”

            “I,” he said, all too easily, “knew you couldn’t be.”

            Rey’s mouth fell open.  “Fine words, monster,” she hurled at him.  Out of all his possible responses for trying to kill her, _manipulative lies_  were what he chose?  

            Kylo’s features darkened, clearly frustrated, the barely-contained furies within him about to burst.  She saw his hair slowly stir, not from the wind or the snow … no, probably from a shipboard conditioning unit on some distant, hate-filled starship.  Could he hear the shuttle, even now?  Rey felt Kylo’s senses heightening, narrowing, and he looked skyward.  Blast him, he was always demanding to see what was never willingly offered!  “Who are you trying to protect from me?” he asked suddenly.  His voice was so quiet.  So deadly.

            That was it.  Time was up.  “Ben.”

            Rage fully broke over him now, both all-encompassing and dark as space itself.  “You’re going to _stop_ calling me that!” he thundered at her.

            She resisted him.  She was always resisting him.  “You’re still Ben Solo, somewhere, no matter what path you’ve chosen.  You can’t escape the light, not completely.”  Rey pressed forward in the force, physically throwing back her hood with the forward-motion of it.  Snowflakes landed softly on her hair, incongruent with her fierceness.

            Again she sensed a strange, unidentified emotion locked somewhere inside of Kylo’s bellowing rage.  He guarded it well.  What was he hiding? 

             “I told you, I _am_ a monster,” his voice lashed at her, “and you will have the respect to call me by its name!”  **_I’ll tear the galaxy apart looking for you … and then I’ll tear apart the past, all of it, if I have to …_**

            “Don’t fool yourself, Ben.  I know your past: your uncle, your mother, your father — ”

            “Yet you understand _nothing!_ ” Kylo Ren snarled.  He stepped forward, the old forest menace, a streak of dark, malevolent fire against a very cold snow.  “I know the truth, Rey.  _You_ won’t escape the darkness, not completely.  And then you’ll come to me: a monster.”  **_You know I can take whatever I want …_**

            Rey felt her face whiten at the sinister echo in her mind.  She stepped backward, taking a suddenly-uncertain retreat from Kylo’s dark offensive.  Her mental shields against the force-bond were weakening … images, feelings, flashes poured unbidden between them ... visions of the dark forest on Starkiller Base in the falling snow … she saw Kylo Ren force-tossing her against a tree ... Kylo Ren battling her into retreat ... Kylo Ren striking down Finn ...

            Finn. 

            Rey had to end this.  For now.  She closed her eyes.

            A light, strange suddenness settled over her consciousness.  Then, with a breath, in a flash, she reached out and caught the unknown feeling that wafted beneath Kylo’s rage, the same feeling he’d tried to hide earlier.  Rey practically grabbed it out of the force and looked at it, turning it over with her mind.

**_Jealousy._ **

            Kylo was jealous.  Ben was jealous. 

            Really?   Rey’s brow crinkled in confusion.  Of what?  Why?

            His eyes burned her.  His hands balled into fists; Rey fancied she heard the bones within cracking, creaking.  Had he sensed her grabbing hold of the feeling?

            “ _Stay out!_ ” he shouted.

            Apparently so.

            It was so two-faced, how much Kylo Ren hated having someone look into _his_ head.  _No one else can do that anymore_ , Rey thought, and the realization startled her anew.  Snoke could, and did, use the dark side of the force to study Ben Solo’s mind … probably even before he was born … and Luke had used the light side to do so too, though Luke came to regret it.  Yet both of those powerful force-users were gone now.  There was no one else. 

            No one but her. 

            Well, her and General Organa, whom Kylo seemed to hate just as much as he hated Rey.

            Without warning, Rey felt a gray, shimmering thrum, followed by a dizzy feeling.  The force appeared to be finished with the two of them for the moment.  Their bond-thread snapped, or rather, rewound itself.  In that rush, Kylo was gone.  He left behind only a flash of heat against one of her wrists, as if he’d tried to seize it on his way out.

            She was alone again, mostly.  She was used to that.

            Finn’s shuttle gradually came into view, thumping to a stop in the snow.  Rey made her way inside.  Her breath felt exasperatingly ragged.  A wobbly feeling turned her insides to heat, to bile.  Shakily, she ordered herself back toward serenity.  Back toward the light.  “These goggles are enormous, Finn,” she called out, managing to warble only a little.  “How did they ever fit Rose?”

            “Rey.”  Finn was raking a worried hand over his jaw, back and forth.  “I’ve been trying to make contact with you for twenty minutes.  BB-8 had to target your location.  Something must be wrong with the comlink.”

            “Uh.”  Rey shook her handheld comlink around.  “Yes.”

            BB-8 rolled forward to check her communication device, inclining its head forward.  It didn’t take long before the little droid looked up at Rey and beeped skeptically.

            “Nothing’s wrong with it?” Rey tried to be airy again.  It was definitely harder to pull that act with friends.  She had only been protecting them, she told herself, using the force to hold off their communication with her until force-bond-Kylo — or force-bond-Ben, or whoever he was supposed to be now — had disappeared back into the ether of space.  “Maybe it was the snow.”

            “I hate the snow,” Finn grumbled.

            Rey didn’t have to reach out with her feelings to know that her best friend was remembering his near-deadly battle with Kylo in the snow-drenched forest on Starkiller Base.  Finn had been trying to protect her then.  She was going to do the same for him, by the stars.  “I was able to sense the abandoned Rebel base,” Rey reminded Finn quickly, comfortingly. “The data-pod we came for will be there.  Then we can rest a bit, maybe even eat some spare rations I stashed away.”  She took over the small shuttle pilot’s seat.  “There’s an extra for us both.”

            “Oh,” Finn grimaced for a second.  “Extra rations.”  Military food-rations held no allure for Finn, the former Stormtrooper.  For Rey, though, a scavenger barely scraping by on rehydrated portions, Resistance-style rations still seemed exotic.  Remembering this, Finn quickly altered his tone. “Oh, extra rations!  Good, great.”  He glanced down at the shuttle’s surface-scan controls. “And no uh, no snow monsters, at this lost mountain base?” he asked tentatively.  “Can you, uh, ‘sense’ any of those, wizard?”  This was his term of friendly endearment for Rey now, after the Resistance’s survival on Crait.

            Her smile was soft. “There’ll be no snow monsters for you, rebel.”

            Behind them, BB-8 shook Rey’s comlink around, trilling suspiciously.


	3. Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I had to make sure you weren’t a Skywalker,” he said, “distant or otherwise.”
> 
> “Why?” Rey demanded, batting the water with a fist.
> 
> He raised an eyebrow at her sudden ferocity. “You know why,” he muttered.

            “Dameron mentioned that this base might have a hot springs chamber,” Finn said, clicking through various scan-switches as the shuttle flew over the snowy hills below.  “I guess they’re like private warm-water pools, for R&R.  Sounds pretty fancy for the old Rebel Alliance, if you ask me.  You ever see any hot springs before, Rey?”

            “There weren’t many baths on Jakku,” Rey replied quietly, concentrating on the shuttle instruments and the feel of flight.  “Just refreshers.”  She decided not to mention how rare even those were for her.  She still felt unsettled from her “exchange” with Kylo Ren on the hillside, and kept trying to shake it off.

            “We only had refreshers too, back in standard ops,” Finn sympathized.  His best friend’s former poverty sometimes seemed to embarrass her.  He shook his head.  “Some crazy rocks and bucketships we’ve lived on, huh?”

            She nodded. 

**_At night, desperate to sleep ... you imagine an ocean ... I see it ..._ **

            Rey stiffened lightly, imperceptibly, as she landed the shuttle in a flat expanse near the base’s well-hidden hatch.  BB-8 was already rolling in circles near the shuttle-exit, all systems ready and rearing to start hacking.  The droid seemed to have put aside its concerns about Rey’s not-at-all-malfunctioning comlink.

            “I’ll make you a deal, wizard.” Finn switch-clicked away, anchoring the shuttle.  “After we find this data-pod, I’ll let you have that extra ration you put aside for me.”  He grinned.  “As long as you let me test out those hot springs first, in peace, like a real luxurious admiral or something.”

            “You mean if we don’t get eaten by mountain-monsters first?” Rey asked, perfectly innocently.

            “What?  Rey?  What?!  Why?!”  Finn did a quadruple-take of the landing area as the shuttle doors opened. 

            “I can sense that you hate rations, you know,” she chided him, smiling.  Her friend’s monster-anguish was just too charming not to tease.

            After droid-scans, force-senses, and friendly jibes, the trio found themselves inside the old mountain base in a matter of moments, checking the electrics, tinkering with the back-up generators, and scanning the storage compartments.  BB-8 found the data-pod surprisingly soon, too; it seemed the Rebel base was so remote that it had been all but forgotten.  That didn’t stop them from celebrating their mission-success with a silly dance — well, _Finn_ danced, a little, while wearing Rose’s giant goggles, and BB-8 made apparently-celebratory circles. 

            Rey didn’t dance.  She just beamed.

_Lost._

_Lonely._

**_No one to really understand …_ **

            Her smile turned into a slight frown.  Even when her mental-shields were fully intact, the hum of the force was always crooning softly in the back of her mind.

 

***

 

            An hour or so later, Finn was still going on about his glorious personal test of the hot springs.  Sure, sure, he’d made BB-8 scan the pool chamber for safety several times.  Yeah, yeah, he’d pleaded for the droid to run no less than four separate tests on the water before he actually got in.  But by the stars, he was a luxurious admiral now, or so he declared.

            “You’re ridiculous,” chuckled Poe, checking in via subspace transceiver.  Rey could distantly sense the expert pilot floating in his x-wing high above Hoth-4, still on orbital watch for greater mission security.

            “I’m _ridiculous_ , Dameron?  Incorrect: I am _luxurious_ ,” Finn informed him, grinning into the transceiver.  Finn looked freshly-scrubbed, and a feeling of sleepiness wafted from every pore.  The unexpected ease of the mission had — almost — completely calmed his nerves.  “And I’m exhausted.  And our wizard could really use a break, too.”

            “Now _that_ I agree with.”  Ever since Crait, Poe had become more and more concerned with the well-being of their rock-lifting friend.

            “I’m fine,” Rey chimed in, trying her best not to sound uncomfortably bewildered by what she could only assume was brotherly concern.  “Finn’s going to take a bunk-nap in the old crew quarters we found. They’re in wonderful condition, considering their age.”  As a scavenger she’d seen plenty of badly-aged Empire and Alliance scrap-interiors; the mountain base wasn’t one of them.

            “Guess you two lucked out on this mission.  Well, there aren’t any bandits in the black out here yet.  Let’s recon in two hours — should be the best time to jump into hyperspace unnoticed.”  Poe was all about following mission orders nowadays, as if trying to make amends for his behavior toward the late Commander Holdo.  Guilty conscience or not, though, he still managed to drift a mischievous question over the transceiver: “Where are _you_ going to bunk-nap, Rey?”

            “Gods, Dameron, Rey’s my best friend!” Finn protested, both immediately and loudly.

            Rey’s cheeks felt hot.  “I’m … not tired.”

            “Well, try to get some sleep.  Two hours are never as long as they seem,” Poe pressed on; he had no force-senses with which to detect blushing.  “How’s Rose doing these days, Finn?”

            It was Finn’s turn to look uncomfortable.  His stammered transceiver conversation continued as Rey waved good-night — or rather, good-nap — and motioned that she was headed for a turn in the hot springs after all.  Any escape in a flyboy storm.

            On the way she walked past BB-8, who seemed to be blissfully trilling while encoding a detailed scan of the base.  The little droid did pause, however, to extend a robotic arm and point out a thin white blanket to his human friend.  The blanket was folded neatly near a matching one, now damp, that Finn had used to dry off after his own soak in the spring.  (Finn had politely — or self-consciously — changed back into his clothes elsewhere, of course.)

            “Did you get these out of shuttle storage?” Rey asked.

            BB-8 whirred in the affirmative. 

            Rey gave the round fellow a pat and took the dry blanket. “You think of everything.”

            BB-8 whirred in the affirmative again, before diverting its attention back to encoding.

            The hot springs were located several corridors down from the main base chamber, and a rough path to them was dimly marked by illuminated rock-crystal lamps.  (Shortly after arriving, the trio of Resistance explorers had discovered the old base’s back-up generators — powered via snow-water — and with a little help from BB-8 and Rey’s dual tinkering, they’d got them running again.)  However, Rey didn’t need the lamps to find her way now.  She’d already sensed the rock pools, long before she stepped into the large interior chamber to see them in person.

_Warm._

_Beckoning._

_Light._

            The rounded, natural hot spring pools filled the chamber in a tiered array, bordered and dotted with smooth rocks.  Warmer than the air inside the chamber, the clear waters gave off a haze of misty steam.  Curiously, each pool was lit from below with an outlandish blue glow.

            The Rebel Alliance really _had_ lucked out with a base built around so beautiful a place.  Rey did wonder, though, whether some long-forgotten, high-ranking official had insisted that the Hoth-4 base be established here specifically for the springs.  There didn’t seem to be much else of note in the surrounding snow-mountains, except creatures, ice, snow, and trees ... or maybe it was the isolation that made it so valuable ... 

_Warm._

_Beautiful._

_Water._

            Gods, she was so tired.  Rey truly wanted to be calm and clean and clear, in more ways than she could ever possibly explain to any of her Resistance friends.  She removed her clothes rather fast, piling them well-back from the smooth rock pools.  They’d need to stay dry for the journey back home.

_Home._ Rey tried out the word in her mind for what seemed like the thousandth time.  The idea was still strange.  Every place she went, even now, felt like something she’d scavenged together.  _Maybe I’m not destined to have a home; some_ _lost people are just destined to wander, after all._ She exhaled, determined to shake the darkness from her thoughts, and plunked her drying-blanket down by the edge of a pool.

            Cautiously, she poked a toe into the water.  A sense of safe, dazzling warmth flooded her senses.  Finn was right; this must be what luxury felt like.  No longer hesitating, Rey lowered the rest of her lithe form into the spring.  

            For a moment, two moments, maybe more, she floated blissfully among the mist-covered rocks, her eyes closed.  It seemed little more than a dream to a desert-rat like herself.  The hot springs, the Resistance, the galaxy at large and in crisis … the friends she was learning to adore, the mysteries of the force … maybe she dreamed the whole lot of it. 

_Then don’t wake up.  Never wake up._

            What lit the pools?  Relaxed, unhurried, almost in a trance, Rey’s scavenger-curiosity got the better of her.  She reached out into the balmy force-energy surrounding the water, exploring, wondering … she sensed blue rock-crystals glowing at the bottom of each pool, practically humming with the force.  Deeper, far below the frozen snow outside, she sensed a hot earthen center … it hummed too, heating the water ... hot and cold ... life and death ...

_Life._

_Death._

**_Darkness._ **

            Rey felt the sudden snap of the force-bond almost push her underwater.  Her mental-shields came slamming down, but it wasn’t enough to keep the force — or him — at bay. 

_Oh, SOD this bond until there was no more sod to sod!_   Without time to think, Rey flung herself behind a rock in the glowing water, letting out a wordless shriek and clapping both her arms around her chest.  “Why?!” she shrieked again, furiously, fully-articulate this time.

            Kylo stood across the illuminated springs, his usually-controlled features looking, to his credit, admirably jarred.  His eyes were brighter than usual, and his cheeks felt hot.

            Gods, how could she know that, or feel that?  With a flailing splash, Rey grabbed her drying-blanket from the pool’s edge and flung it over her submerged body so fast that she was sure she must have unwittingly used the force to do so — with a further flick of her fingers, intentional this time, two corners of the cloth force-knotted at the back of her neck, creating a sarong-like covering that fully compressed itself against her.  “Go away!” she shouted at Kylo.  What was the force doing?  They’d already popped into each other’s bond-vision not that long ago.

            His eyes went unreadable again as they looked up at the ceiling.  “You know the bond takes time to dissolve.”

            Why wasn’t he as angry as he’d been earlier?  Had he taken out his rage on an unlucky underling somewhere?  And by the _gods_ , who cared?  “Hell,” Rey ground out, the emotions behind her profanity clanging around inside of her head.  She spun away from him with a splash and crouched low in the water, glad there was at least a protective layer of misty steam — _which he couldn’t see!_

            “I see the steam.”

            She fired a look at him. 

            Jaw twitching, he was still gazing up at the ceiling.  “I see the pool too.”

            Rey was forming the word how, mixed with I don’t care, with a heady stirring of fury, when Kylo descended into the same meditative kneel that she’d woken to find him in while she’d been trapped inside the First Order interrogation room.  Rey could sense that his stance was meant to make her feel calmer, now. 

            It didn’t.

            It certainly hadn’t back then.

            Maybe it made _him_ calmer.

            Back then, he’d deliberately maneuvered a cold, welling darkness into the side of her head. Back then, he’d expected to be greeted with everything there was to see about her.  But here, now, as Rey hid scowling in the pool, she could sense _his_ thoughts.

**_Where is she …_ **

**_Somewhere beneath the earth … where a great heat causes the water to warm …_ **

**_Jealousy ..._ **

            There was that jealous feeling again.  Why?  Rey chopped angrily at the water with a flick of her wrist, radiating with irritation at Kylo’s persistently-invasive thoughts.   _Maybe I could drown him!  I owe him nothing — quite the opposite, in fact!_

            His lips pursed together. “Such a noble Jedi, resorting to murder when it suits her.”

            “I’m not a — I told you to get out of my head!”

            “Then stay out of mine.”

            In spite of herself, Rey shot him a curious glance.  “That was … figurative,” she muttered.   Why in blazes was she stumbling over her words?  “I didn’t want to actually drown you.”  Or did she?  Did she lie to herself, even now?

            “You’re wrong, you know,” said Kylo.  His voice was low.  “You do owe me.”

            Rey stared. “How could I possibly owe you _anything_?”

            “You owe me your life.”

            She almost stood up.  No, no, didn’t want to do that.  She pressed a wet strand of hair back from her face, in open disbelief.  “You can’t be serious.”

            “I spared you from Snoke, as you recall.”

            “You brought me _to_ Snoke!”

            “He would have called you to him.  That would have been worse.  Much worse.”

            Her eyes narrowed for a moment.  Only a moment.  “Is that what he did to you?” she asked, quietly.  She peered at him; it was useless.  Kylo’s expression was every bit as inscrutable as if he were still inside of his mask. 

            He didn’t answer her question, but his tone became accusing again. “You.  Owe.  Me.”

            “You may have spared me from _that_ monster,” she began experimentally, just barely humoring the idea, “but even that would mean you’ve spared _one_ life — ”

**_Three._** The word echoed between them, cutting her off and ringing inside of her head.  Instantly she could sense a wave of dark, furious regret from him at having allowed her to sense it.

             “Three lives?” she asked, momentarily derailed.  Kylo’s brow furrowed; his formerly inscrutable expression looked suddenly murderous.  Rey tried again, coaxing her voice into the light: “Who else?”

            His gaze finally flickered down from the ceiling, settling on her.  His mind was closed.   Shields up.

            She would _not_ allow her cheeks to flush in the fireline of his eyes.  Instead, she met them defiantly.  “You’ve spared only _one_ life, Ben,” she reasoned with mounting frustration, “as far as I can see.  One life among many millions, all cut down by your blasted First Order.  What about the weight of all those lives?  What about your fath — ”

             “ _Enough!_ ”  Kylo’s voice practically scorched the water surrounding her.  He shifted almost imperceptibly, then, just barely regaining control, he tried again.  “You said you needed someone to show you your place in all this.”

            Rey’s eyes were very bright, almost pained.  She finally noticed that he was gazing fixedly at her face.  It was deliberate; he was willing himself to look only there.  Leaning forward against the dampness of the protective rock, Rey flung her words to him mentally: _It’s only my strength in the force that means something to you.  Not me, myself.  I’m nothing.  No one._

            “You still don’t understand.  You are … you _will_ listen to me.”  A muscle twitched in his face.  “The past is littered with hypocrisy, can’t you see?  It must die.  It’s the only way forward,” he declared.  “We’ll shape the galaxy anew.  You won’t deny me.”

            Gods, he was mad.  He was still furious that she didn’t take his hand, livid that she’d refused to join him, and now, he’d gone mad as a raving spacer.  Below the water, Rey clenched a fist against her thigh.  “When we connected earlier, you told me that you weren’t a Sith.”  Her fist almost shook.  “Yet here you are, ranting away, one master struck down, trying to turn a new apprentice to the darkness.”  She could see Kylo, clearly taken aback, fuming, sputtering to interrupt her, but she didn’t let him.  Not now.  She rushed on.  “You claim to have _saved_ me?  Then you should be _free of it now!_ ”  Rey suddenly realized she’d practically screamed the words at him.  The vehemence of her tone shocked her.

            He inhaled.  She waited.  He exhaled.  Their fists were both clenched.

            “I _am_ free of it,” he finally said, quite low, through ground teeth, “of a sort.”  His look was almost bewitched.  It curled an odd, frightened feeling into her stomach.  “I see more clearly now,” he proceeded.  “All … most things pass away, Rey.”  His mouth set firmly.  “The First Order will pass away.  The Resistance will pass away.” 

_I won’t let you kill any more of my friends.  Or me._

            A dark fury stirred inside of him.   ** _I told you, I could never kill you._**

_You tried though, Ben._

            His fist came down against the ground. It practically shook the room, even here, in their non-physical space.  “Ben Solo is _dead!_ ”

            Rey’s lip twitched. No, trembled.

            Hell.

            He _clearly_ saw it tremble.

            In a flash, Rey witnessed Kylo tilt his head slightly to the side, sensed him reaching out in the force again toward the foundations of her mental shields … always searching, always investigating, always seeing ... with darkness, but with a lost, hunted hunger too …

            Just as it had on the mountain, Rey’s anger flared.  Her chin jutted out.  She possessed her _own_ kind of darkness, after all.  Went right for it, as a shocked Luke Skywalker had once informed her.  She had no fear of it. 

            She wanted Kylo to go away.  Forever. 

            No, she wanted to attack.  Forever. 

            “I asked you earlier,” she said crisply, “and you wouldn’t answer.  Why did you _look into_ my past, Ben?”

            “ _Kylo Ren!_ ” he shouted back.

            She barely registered his volume.  Rey was all defiance now, despite the pool, the steam, and the current state of her dress.  “Why’d you research my parents?  Why did you try to find out who I was?”  Her voice was so quiet, so light: the mirror-opposite of his. “Me, a nobody?”

            Kylo scowled.  She felt the heat of the earth, the heat of him.  “I didn’t mean — you didn’t understand me,” he began, correcting himself through his teeth as he went, “and you know it.”  A beat.  “You know me.”  **_Like no other ever could._**

            “Answer me, Ben.”

            All at once, the onslaught of another force-vision swelled into Rey’s mind. 

            She saw Luke ... a young, wide-eyed Luke ... gods, had the tormented old man that Rey found on Ahch-To ever been that naive?  She saw him granted a quick kiss by a beautiful woman in white, her hair a marvel of braided physics ... the two of them swung across a mechanical void, off into adventure ... and then she saw a slightly-older Luke, again granted a kiss from that same woman … she felt a crackle of ensuing jealousy echoing over the bridge of a starship … the Millennium Falcon.  Of course.  Rey knew that craft well by now.  She knew the jealous man, too: Han Solo, a shockingly young and dashing Han Solo, and he didn’t much care for that kiss, apparently.  She finally recognized the young woman as General Organa, who turned out to be Luke’s sister ... gods, how awkward … a woman who remained tied to everything, even now: a force of nature, a force of the light ... and Ben’s mother, at that ...

            The vision dipped lower, into the darkness ... exactly where Rey was unafraid to look.  She looked upon a ghost, or a man, or someone in-between, always lurking in the darkness ... always breathing raggedly, always in so much unbelievable pain ... a towering nightmare of a Sith lord, straight out of the often-indecipherable prophecies in Luke’s ancient Jedi books … it had to be Darth Vader.  Luke’s father, and Ben’s grandfather … a man born of the force … a man Ben feared he would never match for strength … a man who’d given his life to rescue his son, finally bringing light back to the force …

            Fathers, brothers, sisters, grandsons … always bound through the force … all Skywalkers … the force was always strong with the Skywalkers ...

            Rey found herself struggling to breathe.  The vision was too much, too vast, too deep.  She pushed against the corners of it as hard as she could, breathing heavily, desperately ripping herself back into the present.  She staggered in the pool with a disoriented splash.

            “Rey!”  Kylo shot to his feet, cape billowing in the motion’s sudden wake.  His voice was adamant, a bark of suspicion in its wake.

            Rey blinked water from her lashes, steadying herself.  Had Kylo shared these visions?  No.  It didn’t seem that he had, and even so, they contained proceedings he couldn’t possibly have seen or known.  Why would the force show her these histories, these feelings?  Rey was no Skywalker.  She was — oh, how it still ached, the memory of Ben saying it aloud — nothing.

            Why would Ben Solo-Skywalker research the parents of a nobody?

            And then the force sang the answer to her:  _they’d had quite enough romantic relational confusion in the Skywalker family._

            Kylo loomed over the pool.  Rey had almost forgotten how imposingly large he was.  His stare grabbed her, inspected her, unsettled her. “What is it?” his voice almost glittered, sliding low on a saber’s edge of suspicion.  His irritation practically colored the steam between them.  “What are you doing?”

            Something set in her jaw.  Force or no force, Rey refused to be intimidated by a vision.  She would fear neither darkness _nor_ light.  She’d make Ben answer for himself.  “Why did you look into my parents, Ben?” she demanded once more.

            His suspicion turned to anger.  She still refused to call him Kylo Ren.

_Why, Ben?_

**_Rage … obsession … hunger ..._ **

            “I had to make sure you weren’t a Skywalker,” he said, “distant or otherwise.”

            “ _Why?_ ” Rey demanded, batting the water with a fist.

            He raised an eyebrow at her sudden ferocity.  “You know why,” he muttered.

            She leaned forward.  “Say it.”

            Kylo’s lips twitched.   ** _Rey._**

            “Say it to me!”  Her expression was fierceness personified.

            “Because … you owe me,” he said, staring fixedly at her now.  “You belong to me.”

            Rey’s fierceness turned to bewildered disbelief.  He really wouldn’t say it.  Did Kylo still understand what family or friendship were anymore, or had these concepts curdled so long in the darkness inside of him that he only understood possession?  “You want to kill the past, Ben?  It’s dead already.”  Rey’s voice had an intensity she barely understood.  “There’s no more Sith.  There’s no rule of two.  You’re not my master; I’m not your apprentice.”

            He exhaled sharply, like he was deeply, inescapably frustrated with her.  Nevertheless, a stubborn shadow-smile followed the sound, ghosting over his lips before vanishing completely; it felt, somehow, more conflicted, more cynical than anything she’d sensed from him before.  “We’ll see,” he said, simply.

            Rey’s heart leapt into her throat.  For the first time since Kylo had appeared by the glowing springs, she felt exposed.  She was covered, but she knew Kylo saw her.  All of her.  He saw the water droplets dotting her shoulders, the curling wetness of her hair, the way the blanket pressed against the pale outline of her body.  He saw the track of her ever-defiant chin, the outline of her legs beneath the pool, nothing but lonely desperation behind her, nothing but great power in front of her.  He saw her.  And she was no sister, no cousin, no distant relation twice-removed. 

            No Skywalker. 

            Just a girl.  Who meant … something … to him.

            Rey took a long breath, almost overcome by the sensation of a dark, powerful heat.  It radiated not just from far below the earth, but from Kylo, curling its way at last into the corners of her realization.

**_And what about the heat of your own?_ **

            Her brows knit as a rebellious scowl curled over her features.  Her lips parted —

            “Rey?”

            Oh, GODS.  Finn.  Not now!

            “Hey, wizard!” Finn was ambling down the halls, calling out to avoid startling her.  She could sense him exaggeratedly placing both hands over his eyes, ever the gentleman jester.

            Horrified, Rey watched as the darkest, most rage-filled glare she had ever seen settled over Kylo’s face and slid slowly ... so slowly she almost screamed ... in the direction of Finn’s voice.  “With _the_ _traitor_ , are you?” Kylo ground out, somewhere between a hiss and a snarl.  The feeling that radiated from him now almost knocked Rey off her feet.

**_JEALOUSY._ **

_BACK OFF!_   Inside Rey’s command of the force it was a shout, a shove.  _He’s my friend!_

**_If anyone else ever touches you, I’ll kill them._ **

            Anyone _else_ _?_   Rey tossed her confusion over Kylo’s new tantrum of intensity aside; she had exactly zero minutes to parse meaning from his childish ranting any longer.   _If you don’t leave my friends alone, I’ll kill YOU_ , she sent him. _  
_

            Kylo turned, his eyes aflame with darkness now, his jaw pulsing back and forth. **_That plan worked out so well for your beloved traitor back in the forest!_**

_YOUR plans didn’t work out so well there either, First Order of the Scar!_  Rey stood up.  The air around her felt cold, even though the saturated blanket remained firmly tied around her neck, shielding her from Kylo’s open gaze.

            His eyes locked with hers.  But now she knew he saw her, all of her.

            Wanted her.

            All of her.

            The force between them swirled, indeed, with steam of its own.  **_A dark, mutual rage ..._** _and a heart-pulsing, breathless pull toward the light ..._

            “Rey, it’s recon time,” Finn called, pressing both hands quite dramatically over his eyes as he leaned into the hot springs chamber.  “Time to get the hell out of this freezing old Hoth-base and — ” Finn’s voice broke as he froze where he stood, wheezing soundlessly, rendered speechless by some unseen grasp.

            One dripping arm outstretched, every bare finger splayed, Rey had immobilized Finn with the force.  Her eyes were wet, apologetic — not that Finn could see them, gasping as he was, frozen with his palms over his eyes.  

            “Finn,” Rey pleaded. “Please.  Don’t say anything else!”

            The force crooned in her head, rewinding.

_No!_

            Their bond reeled and snapped.  As she whirled to face Kylo, he was gone.  As he went, she could sense him breaking into a run, barking orders for investigating ... for searching ...

            Rey released Finn immediately, throwing herself out of the pool with a little cry as her friend fell to the floor, gasping for air.  “Finn,” she pleaded. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”  She ran to him, placed a hand on his jacket, and willed away the rising memory of her best friend lying near-death in the snow.  “Finn.  We have to go.  Now.  Get Poe on the subspace transceiver!”

            “What - in - blazes,” Finn choked out weakly.  “Are - you - wearing - a wet - blanket?”  He coughed loudly.

            Distracted, Rey helped pull him to his feet before she ran for her clothes, dashing behind a large boulder to throw them on.  “I’ll explain later,” she shouted over a flurry of fabric-lacing and pulling.  “Listen.  We have to grab absolutely anything BB-8’s found that could be of importance to the Resistance, and we have to grab it now.”  She emerged fully dressed, still hopping into her second boot as she broke into a run.

            Finn lurched himself into a wary, winded readiness beside her.  “I wasn’t - going to - take a peek at you!” he croaked groggily, even as he hurried with her down the passageways.

            “I know!  I’m sorry!” Rey’s eyes were still bright, still wet.  “It’s not — please, Finn — I’ll have to explain later!”  They both ran toward BB-8’s questioning beeps.

            How much had Kylo heard?  How much information did he need?

            How could she have put her friends into so much danger?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Multiple chapters ahead, most already completed. Multiple emerging feels ahead, too. I'll be uploading one chapter per day for as long as I can manage it! *taps wand on computer screen* Mischief, attemptedly-managed. :P
> 
> P.S. I feel incredibly dusty! I haven't written in awhile, but I'm rather looking forward to giving these two oddly-compelling space-duffers the ol' scribbling try. :)


	4. Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You will TELL me where you are!”_ Kylo practically thundered. 
> 
> “Oh, gods,” Rey whispered, barely hearing him, staring straight ahead.

            “Let me get this straight.”  General Organa rubbed the bridge of her nose.  It seemed like this debriefing was the longest of her life — only it wasn’t, of course, not by a long blast.  At least the mission on Hoth-4 had been mostly successful: the data-pod was in hand, and all four Resistance fighters had successfully evaded the First Order.  However, there were indeed several enemy starships en route to investigate the Hoth system, even as General Organa spoke.   “My lost son, Supreme Leader-apparent to the First Order, has been communicating with you at random, able to see you through the force, and you only just now thought this might be important to mention?”

            Rey could hardly look at her.  “Yes.”  She sat in a chair, her hands meekly folded in her lap.  How quickly one of the strongest beings in the galaxy could shrink back down to the childhood of her past. 

_Please don’t abandon me.  You are the only family I have ever known._

            In the window of the general’s chamber, pinpoints of stars turned to streaks as the Resistance starship flew along.  General Organa rose from her chair, crossing the room toward Rey.

            “I’m so sorry,” Rey burst out in an unavoidably, exasperatingly teary rush, “Snoke opened the bond, to use us, to turn us, but his death didn’t shut it off, and I’ve been trying to close it, to shut Ben — I mean, to shut Kylo Ren out, and I thought I could handle things, and I didn’t want to put anyone in danger, and — ”

            Leia’s arms folded around Rey in a protective, silencing embrace.  “Dear, crazy girl, why didn’t you tell me?  You don’t have to fight all your battles alone.”

            Rey’s eyes widened to a seemingly-impossible vastness.  The warm, humming force of the general’s kindness was almost too much for her to bear.  Rey squeezed both lids shut and hugged Leia back — knowing that the general could already sense the frenzied plans swimming in her head, understanding that, try as Rey might, she couldn’t fully block the only other living, force-empowered being out of her mind, particularly when they were in the same room.

            What General Organa said was kind, but it wasn’t entirely true.  Rey _would_ eventually have to fight Kylo Ren alone.  Only she could do what they both knew she must.  “You know I’ve studied the old Jedi texts, at least as much as I can,” Rey ventured, carefully, “and you know I’ve had … a little assistance.”  She paused.  “What if I’m not strong enough yet?”

            “That’s always an important question.”  General Organa pulled back a little from her hug, looking thoughtful.  “And I’ve got a theory, Rey: you haven’t even _begun_ to call upon all of your strengths yet.”  Leia sounded so sure, so certain, even though her smile was tinged with wry resign.  “We just have to match the right secret strengths with the right secret strategy.”

 

***

 

            Hours later, Rey crept into the dark shuttle bay on silent, well-practiced feet.  Using the force to sneak by the Alliance starship’s night watch felt somehow dishonorable, but she knew it had to be done.  The bag on her shoulder — packed with all of her worldly possessions, few as they were — felt heavy.  _She_ felt heavy, but she still moved with a scavenger’s nimbleness among the ships lining the bay.  She’d take Shuttle R-30; it had a little more storage than the others, but it was still small and light and replaceable, something the Resistance wouldn’t need, and hopefully not miss.

            “It’s pretty late for joy-flying, Rey.”

            She’d sensed Finn hiding in the shuttle bay, of course.  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the force on him again, not even for a simple sight-block.  Rey sighed and turned.

            Finn stood in the shadow of Poe’s x-wing, the only fighter docked in the bay at the moment.  It sat among the patched-together shuttles as if a spotlight were on it.  Had her friend been loitering there for some time?  Yes, she realized.  “How’d you know that I’d come here?” she asked, quietly.

            The former Stormtrooper managed a laugh, despite the waves of worry radiating from him.  “I’ve been exactly where you are, Rey.  More than once.”  Finn rubbed the back of his neck.  “You’re, uh, not gonna strangle me, are you?  Because I’m not really into that, you know.  More of a breathing-normally kind of guy.”

            She almost laughed too, in spite of the entire situation.  They’d talked during the mad dash back to their current Resistance starship, of course.  And at long last, Rey had told Finn about Ben.  About their bond.  About Luke’s Jedi books, about her growing strength in the force.  About how, if she wasn’t able to protect her friends, she couldn’t be sure which way she’d fall.  Finn understood, at least somewhat, but he was certainly going to give her grief about force-shushing him in the hot springs until the end of time, or maybe beyond that. 

_Giving each other grief is what friends do best_ , he’d told her.

            Rey’s eyes felt damp again.  She was starting to loathe the feeling.  “I’ve got to go, Finn.  I can’t put the Resistance at risk.  Can’t put my friends at risk.”  She shook her head.  Then, very quietly, admittingly, the old lonely desert-rat in her tone, “I’ve only just made some, you know.”

            “Rey, I’ve seen what Kylo Ren can do,” Finn began.  He walked forward until he stood across from her in the shadow of her chosen shuttle.  “The First Order might have operated Starkiller Base under General Hux’s orders instead of his, but of course you saw what Ben — what Kylo — what that monster did to Han, and I … ” he trailed off for a moment, the pain of their protective friendship in the forest hovering between them.  “Look, Kylo Ren once had an entire encampment slaughtered in front of me.”

“I know.  I’ve seen it.”

He blinked at her oddly. 

_He thinks I sound like Kylo Ren._ _Like Ben.  Do I?_

Finn paused, running a hand over his jaw.  “Maybe they were just mercenaries in that village, maybe everyone’s done wrong.  We’ve all got wrongs and rights.  But that wasn’t right.  He isn’t right.”

“He’s a monster in the darkness,” she agreed.  “And he’s in my head, Finn.”  There was something bright and lucid in her look.  “I’ve got to drive him out.”

“You’re gonna run, so the First Order can’t see us.  I get it, Rey, but I don’t like it.  The Resistance needs you.  And you’re gonna try to save him?” he asked, suddenly.  The worry-waves were more insistent now.  “Didn’t you say you tried to save him last year, after some kind of wacky handshake?  You still think there’s anything left to save?”

She opened the shuttle and tossed her bag inside.  “I don’t know.”

Rey sensed Finn’s gaze turning toward the shuttle bay’s intercom.  He could stop her.  No, he couldn’t.  And no, he wouldn’t.  He was remembering Rose, so long ago now, who had stopped _him_ from running, before they joined forces and ran together.  Rey knew that Finn understood perfectly well that she, Rey, couldn’t let him go with _her_.  Not for this. 

“Can’t you take BB-8 with you?” he asked, uselessly.

“Poe needs his droid.  You all do; BB-8's one of the best rebels we have.”  Rey stepped onto the shuttle ramp.  She paused.  Then with quick light steps she went back over to Finn, hugging him, an echo of General Organa’s earlier gesture.  “You were my first friend.”  Somehow, Rey smiled.  “Well, second friend, after BB-8.”

“You were my second friend too.”  Somehow, Finn grinned and cleared his throat.  “After Dameron.  He’s not going to like this.  And Chewie’s gonna be furious.  He’ll probably tear my arms off.”  They both laughed, somehow.

**_Jealousy._ **

Rey broke the hug, quickly, a shot of exasperated frustration filling her senses.  “I’ll be back when it’s safe … rebel.”  She almost couldn’t bring herself to use her friend’s nickname.

“We’ll all be counting on it, wizard.”

 

***

 

_Space could be an adventure when you were with friends.  When you were alone, though, it was just another sea of sand._

A couple of weeks passed.

Wherever she flew, the passage of time had little feeling.

Rey stopped only to rest and refuel, here and there, sticking to little-visited planets.  Her mental shields were always up now, as wily as any old Imperial spy.  She’d kept the hum of the force at bay, and she’d suffered no more bond-appearances, not yet.  Somewhere in the distance of her control she only allowed herself to sense mild flashes, here and there.  She caught hopeful worry mixed with various Resistance goings-on, which would be Rose, Poe, General Organa, and Finn.  She heard the echo of yowling and beeping, translating to frustration and scrappy planning, which were Chewbacca and BB-8.  And, at least whenever she peeped underneath her intensive mental shields to sense it, she felt overwhelming resentment and wild rage, which would be Ben — or rather, Kylo. 

There was only Kylo Ren now. 

Probably.

Once, while refueling on a truly desolate rock of an outer moon, she finally heard the news that the First Order had found the abandoned base on Hoth-4.  Nothing very useful to them remained there.  She wondered if Kylo had ordered the place burned to the ground.  She wondered, too, what had become of the hot springs chamber, the last place she’d felt something close to complete peace.     

Plans or no plans, secret mission or no secret mission, as Rey sped along in the partially-stolen — well, she had decided to think of it as “temporarily scavenged” — shuttle, she felt more alone than she ever had back on Jakku.  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she had _stayed_ alone, just another sandy nobody.  Yet now that she knew what it meant to be attached to friends, to "family," and to the dull, haunted ache in her senses that she outright refused to examine — to lose all that, again, was almost unbearable.

_Enough_ , she told herself, habitually.  Still, at night, or at least whenever she felt sleepy, the weight of the path she’d chosen threatened to crush her.  Tonight, for example, Rey could actually feel an embarrassing storm of tears trying to burst through her mental shields.  She’d been doing so well, too.  She hadn't cried in weeks.  Alas, it was part of her awakened understanding that the light side of the force was made up of all things, particularly empathetic emotions.  And so the tears came. 

            Blast it.

The automated navigation-computer on the shuttle bleeped, as if checking to see what all the fuss was about.  “Oh, shut up,” Rey murmured at it. 

She’d lose herself in the Unknown Regions, or even Wild Space if she had to.  The wilderness, while lonely, remained the safest option for her strategy.  She _had_ to get as far away as she possibly could from the Resistance and the First Order into more uncharted parts of the galaxy.  She had to hide, to gain strength, and to wait for the rest to come to her … she supposed it would be something like what Luke had done, only … only she’d try not to wind up quite so jaded, bitter, or fearful inside, somehow. 

_As if a mere nobody like her could ever succeed where a Skywalker had not …_

The nav-computer bleeped again.  Through her tears Rey glared at it, her insides suddenly swelling with the strange, stupid, outerworldly feeling of wanting to smash up all the communication panels. 

Instead, her eyes widened at what she saw on the nav-screen. 

_Oh._

_Oh gods._

An asteroid field, the largest Rey had ever seen, was ahead, and her shuttle was headed straight for it.

She buckled in, flicking switches with a rush of adrenaline.  “Get me to the nearest moon,” she shouted at the nav-computer, “and … and I’ll do the rest, I guess!”  There was no one else.  Rey’s slender fingers gripped the controls with knuckle-whitening strength.  By her sensing estimates, this untamed rock-storm was even more deadly than the Hoth Asteroid Field, and _that_ one claimed many an unwary ship every blasted day.

Left.  Right.  Sharp left.  Somewhere between the force and her own mechanical quirks, Rey dove through the first part of the immense boulders spinning before her.  “Nearest moon!” she shouted again, her face focused, her eyes darting back and forth from the window to the nav-computer.  “Anytime now!”  An asteroid about the _quarter-size_ of a small moon came hurtling from one side.  Rey leaned forward, her eyes so brilliant they almost pained her, her fingers forming a round claw seemingly of their own accord.  The shuttle cleared it — no, grazed it — and the asteroid practically shuddered as it wobbled away, exploding into the rest of the field-storm.

The force hummed in her brain.  She felt a kind of gray spinning, a flood of nausea.

_No time …_

**_Rey …_ **

_I’ve got to focus …_

“Rey.”

She became aware that Kylo wasn’t just an echo, but standing behind her within their force-bond.  “I don’t have time for your tantrums right now!” she hollered at him reflexively.  The navigation-system started trilling loudly.  It had a desperate, dissonant tone that BB-8 could have never made, even in droidly nightmares.  Rey made another hand-claw, guiding the shuttle away from a much-smaller asteroid.

“Rey!”  He was unrelenting.  There was something odd about his tone, although Rey certainly didn’t have time for introspection.  “What’s going on?  Where are you?” Kylo demanded, and although distracted, Rey could sense he wanted to grip her shoulders, as if to shake her, so much that he had to physically contract his hands at his sides.

A sharp left.  The shuttle took a nosedive, then the opposite.  The nav-computer’s sirens went off; it had registered a course to the nearest moon, although now its trilling sounded even more dissonant as the course locked in automatically.  Rey would have to trust that it was correct.  She couldn’t exactly examine her destination in front of the Supreme Leader over there.  She could see a small blue-and-green moon already — it wasn’t far.  She’d make it.  Maybe Kylo wouldn’t be able to sense where it was.  She certainly couldn’t, at least not yet.

“ _You will TELL me where you are!_ ” Kylo practically thundered. 

“Oh, gods,” Rey whispered, barely hearing him, staring straight ahead.  One of the last asteroids in front of the shuttle looked to be about the size of a small moon itself.  Its lethal bulk almost blocked out her destination entirely.  Rey gripped the shuttle controls as she heard a loud popping noise.  The nav-computer auto-launched the shuttle into a dive.

All at once Kylo was beside her — had her eyes not been so bright, so focused, she would have thrown herself from her seat at the suddenness of his movement — and then there were two hand-claws in the shuttle, one ungloved, one gloved.

The shuttle spun as it dove, faster and faster, and all was gray, and white, and black, and despite the muddled sense of a shout, Rey’s pale, clawed fingers loosened and fell away.

She heard another shout.  A different one, a calmer one.  One that seemed to glow.

Then she knew no more.


	5. Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would have been a perfect hiding-place, she thought sardonically, if only she hadn’t lost her shuttle and communications. If only he hadn’t popped into their force-bond, suspecting her potential whereabouts long before he was supposed to. 
> 
> If only he hadn’t seen her distress.

            Sand.  _Jakku._   _Wrecked._

            Rey gasped.

            Salt water, and waves.  _Not Jakku.  Wrecked, but not broken.  Never broken._

            Rey sputtered, coughed.  Squinted.  She rolled over and pressed her forehead against the wet, white sand that lay beneath her wrung-out, tide-tossed body, thankful for its steadying expanse — her, Rey, thankful for sand!  Gods, the galaxy had a cruel sense of humor!

            She lay for a moment at the edge of the surf on a white sand beach.  Crystal-clear, lightsaber-blue waves lapped meditatively against her.  _Lightsaber._   Rey rolled to sit up with a groan and scanned the horizon.  _The ancient Jedi texts_.  Her eyes went suddenly wide, and the scan became a desperate one.  Her shuttle was not far off, bobbing further out in the sea-cove like a well-made cork.  A seemingly-ancient splashdown parachute flapped against the surf.  She sensed that the small ship was cracked, and bound to sink.  Steeling her reserves, Rey made out for it immediately.

            Her highly-modified quarterstaff was bobbing just outside the shuttle.  She grabbed that first, tying it onto her back with the sodden strap that buckled around her equally-soaked tunic.  Then she managed to crack her way inside.  The Jedi books lay among her meager belongings, wrapped to combat the vacuum of space and therefore quite safe.  Relieved, half-laughing at the mad absurdity of her predicament, Rey piled the bundle of them into her saturated bag.  She caught up her hooded cloak, too, and then set about scavenging as many supplies as she could carry.  The shuttle was fading fast, lifeless in the water.  Its subspace transceiver was utterly dead, although Rey ripped as many cogs and bobs from it as her scavenger-skills could handle. 

            She’d find a way.  A scavenger always did.

            As soon as she’d grabbed all she could, she staggered back to collapse once again on the empty shore.  For a moment, she just laid there, on her back, staring up at the sky.  “All right,” she spoke aloud, to no one.  “Plan B: not breaking.” 

            It was the same as Plan A, but no one else needed to know that.

             The adrenaline of Rey’s senses was working overtime.  She closed her eyes.  Breathed in.  Breathed out.  It was time to go over what she knew and what she felt.  She had made it to the edge of the Unknown Regions.  She’d crash-landed on what looked like a small, beautiful moon, although there was something vaguely unnatural about it … she sensed a humid green jungle on the inside of a considerably large island shore, white sands and ice-blue waters fringing the outside.  She felt the patter of small, instinctual creatures, none of them a real threat to her … no people, no towns, and definitely no transceivers … there was a cluster of abandoned, vine-covered builder’s huts, old Empire in form and function … not much else. 

            The moon was long-abandoned and likely uncharted.  Maybe it didn’t even have a name.  Its unnatural, almost too-sculpted beauty meant it must have been terraformed by the Empire once upon a time, primed for an outpost or vacation-spot, and then completely forgotten about at some point during the war.  Now veiled by the mother of all asteroid storms, it was even more lonely and isolated than the old Rebel base on Hoth-4 had been.  Maybe the entire moon, Rey considered, glancing around the dazzling beach with its tropical borders, was meant to act as a private hot springs for some stuck-up Empire admiral — pining, long ago, for luxury of their own.

            It would have been a perfect hiding-place, she thought sardonically, if only she hadn’t lost her shuttle and communications.  If only _he_ hadn’t popped into their force-bond, suspecting her potential whereabouts long before he was supposed to. 

            If only he hadn’t seen her distress.

            Rey rolled to her feet.  Kylo hadn’t just seen, he’d … helped.  Why?

            Her brows knit.  Lost in thought, she pulled her quarterstaff out of its strap and struck the end of it emphatically into the stand next to her.  It made a wet, sandy _whump_. 

            She was going to need a more complex Plan B.

 

***

 

            Nights turned into days, days turned back into nights.  Like the tide, they cycled ever-onward. 

            Exhausted, Rey dreamed.

            The whole world was red.  She blinked around, her vision swimming.  The red world become a red glow in an illuminated starship, console lights flashing, stars streaking by outside the cockpit windows.  It’s a small craft, she thought dreamingly, mechanically.  Too small.

            She felt the ship was alone — very alone, in fact, and too far out in space for a craft so small.  Well, that wasn’t the brightest idea.  She stood in the small space behind the single pilot’s chair, squinting at the shape buckled into the seat.  Who was the foolish pilot?

            The dream-pilot’s head bent forward, concentrating intently on his course.  Waves of fury, frustration, sleeplessness — and agony, oddly enough — were all Rey needed to connect the shape with the man. 

            Oh, of _course_. 

            She rolled her eyes so hard it almost hurt.  Kylo Ren had been haunting her consciousness for so long, why _wouldn’t_ he be a gloating star in her subconscious dreams as well?

            At least in dreamland she wouldn’t have to trade barbs with him.  She could just look, or glare.  Nobody had to know.  It was _her_ dream.

            Lit by the red panels, his face was all focus.  Dark hair brushed his pale jaw — which was clenched, as usual.  He seemed to be sweating in the hot cockpit; he looked altogether sleep-deprived, even mildly feverish.  Dream-Rey floated a glance out the window.  Dream-Kylo had better slow down, she thought, vaguely, hazily, even though it made no sense; the mother of all asteroid fields would be before him soon. 

            She’d had help making the crossing.  He wouldn’t.

            A golden com-light glimmered, warning that a panel was about to overheat.  Rey reached out sleepily, automatically, trying to configure the right buttons to correct the problem.  Her dream-hand went right through the panel, however, as if it were a ghost’s.  She floated her head back around to look at Dream-Kylo, and one corner of Rey’s lips slid down with rueful disapproval.  He saw none of this.  Wasn’t he supposed to be an expert pilot?

            BANG. 

            Without warning, the panel burst open in an explosion of searing-hot jagged metal.  Dream-Kylo let lose a blood-curdling yell, one far louder than she’d ever heard the real Kylo make.  ( _That_ was saying something.)  Rey jerked forward, an instinctual arm extended, then stepped back, covering her mouth in the rush of the nightmare moment.

            Shards of metal had lodged into Nightmare-Kylo’s side.  Her nightmare proved wicked enough to let her feel what had happened, too: his old bowcaster injury had torn open anew, the same one that Chewie had lobbed at him after Han Solo’s murder. 

            Rey watched, a helpless phantom, as Nightmare-Kylo howled in rage like a wild animal.  Quickly, he staggered himself into a militaristic response-mode.  He engaged the autopilot and slammed down the cooling buttons that she hadn’t been able to earlier.  Next, he contracted all the shaking fingers of one gloved hand, and used the force to pull the metal out of his body, albeit achingly slowly — even Nightmare-Rey couldn’t watch that part — then, gasping heavily, when the lot of it had clattered to the floor, he pulled a med-kit from a compartment and tore off a crude bandage with his teeth.

            He pulled his tunic over his head, his howls even _more_ enraged by the new levels of pain wrought by the movement.  A maze of jagged gore crossed over his bare shoulder.  Nightmare-Rey reflexively averted her eyes again, albeit a little too late.  She’d seen Kylo naked from the waist up before, and blood held no horror for a survivor like her, but she wasn’t about to let her dreaming subconscious deal her the dual nightmare-punch of searing, gruesome pain _and_ confusing shirtlessness.  Blood dotted the floor.  Nightmare-Kylo’s roars remained skillfully muted during his frenzied sterilizing-and-bandaging job, although at the end Nightmare-Rey fancied she heard a kind of dark whimper as he slumped back into the pilot’s seat.

_Gods, what a nightmare._ She realized she was floating closely behind the chair now, her ghost-hand reaching automatically, uselessly, for an extra bandage.

            Turning in a rush, Nightmare-Kylo whirled on her. 

            He locked eyes with her.  Saw her. 

            “ _Why?_ ” he shouted.

            Rey’s eyes flew open with a gasp.  Awake.  She was awake now.  She lay on her side in an old builder’s hut.  Waves murmured in the distance.  She was still on the long-forsaken tropical moon.   Still running.  Still resisting.  Still herself.

            Kylo’s incensed question still rang in her ears.  It had been no mere dream.  It must have been their force-bond, or at least something in-between the two, and Kylo had been far too distracted to see her. 

            Why would the force show her this?  Was the force truly on her side? 

            Was the force on _anyone’s_ side?

            Rey pressed a hand to her forehead.  It felt slightly feverish. 

            Her Plan B had just become even more complex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter today! Tomorrow the boom gets lowered.
> 
> *tries to be dramatic, trips over a large gong* :p


	6. Wilderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stood looking at her guttered shuttle, unmoving, for a long moment.
> 
> Forever trying to sense her. 
> 
> Well, she’d learned a few more tricks than he’d be expecting.

            It was about a week by the sky cycle before Rey sensed a ship. 

            One week was all she’d needed to refocus herself.  Mostly.

            The starship she’d seen in her force bond-dream proved to be Kylo’s smaller TIE silencer.  Rey made a face at the sight of it in person now.  Kylo was too confident, too sure of himself; he’d never even think of sneaking up on her in a less-recognizable craft.  He’d seen the asteroid-field, too, so he’d have known to call upon the smaller ship’s natural agility.  Rey _was_ surprised he’d made it to her distant location so fast — she knew his silencer had a hyperdrive, but TIEs weren’t usually designed to get so deep into space on their own.

             And he had indeed come on his own. 

             She knew he would.

             Her force-bond vision-nightmare, as well as the asteroid field, had _told_ her he would.

             Although a First Order squadron was likely on its way to sweep the vastness of the surrounding star system, their ships were too big, too unwieldy, too slow to get through such an immense, asteroid-laden deathtrap.  Very few still-living pilots could make it through that kind of storm.  They’d need to be strong with the force to barely scrape by, too.

             That left her.  And him.

             And although she’d wound up taking a very different route to get here — such was life, Rey thought, quietly, hauntedly — dealing with Kylo Ren alone had been part of her mission all along.

             Lightly as air, Rey sprinted for and made it to the perch she’d specifically chosen for this moment.  Hidden high among the fronds of a curling tree at the edge of the surf, she peered up at the unsteadily descending ship.  Her half-sunken shuttle still lay in the shallow cove, a few unidentified flying creatures already using its roof for a roost. 

             She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again.  There was nothing but a luminous coolness to her concentration now.  Shields up.  More than ever before.

             The dark TIE silencer almost shuddered to a stop as it landed on the beach.  Its normally-ominous sheen was pockmarked all over by the massive asteroid field.  One wing had a savage-looking bend in it.  Nightmare-vision aside, something deep inside of Rey felt rather satisfied that Kylo Ren had a galaxy’s-worth of trouble getting to her location.  Maybe a Jedi wouldn’t have been happy about the frustrations of another’s struggle, but Rey was not really a Jedi.  More like a Jedi enthusiast.

             And Kylo, or Ben, was not really a Sith, at least not anymore.  Maybe he never had been, at least not completely — or so he’d told her. 

 ** _I am free of it … of a sort_** _,_ he’d said. 

             If Ben was indeed half-free of the darkness, they _really_ needed to get the rest of him sorted out.

             Rey’s eyes narrowed as the black ship’s upper hatch opened and a dark figure emerged from within.  It climbed down to the shore with an audible grunt.  Her heart stilled, all in purposeful silence.  Shields up, all the way. 

             It had been over a year since they’d shared the same physical space.  Yet despite a new haltingness to his gait, and perhaps a new breadth about his arms, Kylo Ren looked the same.  Even in person he had the same hair, same cloak, same boots, same black attire, although right now their Sith-enthusiast appearance looked conspicuously out of place on the tropical sand.  Kylo must have had similar thoughts; he removed the old cloak and let it drop onto the shore.  He stood looking at her guttered shuttle, unmoving, for a long moment.

             Forever trying to sense her. 

             Well, she’d learned a few more tricks than he’d be expecting.

             Even from her perch, even behind her force-shields, Rey could sense that he was indeed wounded.  She almost recoiled at the feel of his side having been torn open again, more jagged now.  The pain coursed, searing, through Kylo’s body and senses.  That explained his hesitant step, as well as his distraction.  Kylo clearly had to concentrate on closing his old bowcaster wound with the force, just as he had on Starkiller Base.

             He moved closer to the edge of the water before unfastening both of his boots, stepping out of them and placing them on the sand.  She sensed him gritting his teeth before stepping into the salty water, felt him force-blocking the previously-unimaginable levels of pain it washed into his wounds.  He grimaced, flinching, but he was intent.  With purposeful strides he struck out for the shuttle in the sea. 

             Now!

             A glowing, extraordinary force in Rey’s head switched on.  Then, with the aid of those glowing edges, and as if flipping that switch in the opposite direction, she completely blocked out Kylo’s link to her in their bond.  It was temporary.  She wasn’t sure how long it would last.

             But it would do.

             Rey finally moved.  In her new grasp on the force, it seemed she proceeded as silently as the slowly-setting light that dappled the water.  She crept out of the tree, around the outcropping of rocks at one side of the beach, and toward the dark TIE silencer.  She climbed up and dropped soundlessly into the cockpit. 

             The flying creatures that had been roosting atop her crashed shuttle out in the cove scattered off at Kylo’s approach, shrieking and cawing as they fled.  He’d be looking for signs of her, something to hold onto, some object on which he could focus the dark, deeply-injured ribbons of his force.  Rey shook her head.  He wouldn’t find anything.

             Inside the ship, she silently swept the quarterstaff off her back.  She could see the TIE’s exploded instrument panel in person now, utterly gashed out.  She winced, almost absorbing Kylo’s pain anew.  She remembered having to look away while he pulled the scraps out of his body with the force.  His rushed bandaging job wouldn’t work out too well for him in the long run. 

             He _did_ have a galaxy’s-worth of trouble getting to her.

             Seemed fair.

             Then, with a scavenger’s brilliant, almost-fanatical eyes, Rey went to work. 

             She pulled this wire here.  Crossed another there.  She _completely_ bent back a very essential cog.  She utterly crumpled several extremely important insulation-coils.  She ripped out an entire clot of metal odds, bobs, and chip-togs. 

             The subspace transceiver she saved for last.  Gods, it looked like the very top of the line, relatively speaking.  Only the old Empire would have been able to afford better.  Rey lingered in front of it a moment, almost regretfully, unscrewing a couple of pieces, pocketing them in spite of herself.  Well.  That was that.

             The destructive sounds of clinking, clanking, and small electrical explosions couldn’t be hidden forever.  Kylo’s head shot up from the guttered shuttle out in the water.  Waist-deep and dripping in the cool blue sea, he stared openly toward the ship he’d rode in on.  Rey sensed his mental rush of triumph, quickly followed by shock, then rage — such dark, petulant rage — all at once.  She heard his guttural shout, but it didn’t even echo inside of her head.  Wounds or no wounds, she felt him strike out for the TIE silencer like a shark in the water.

             Rey closed her eyes, took a steadying breath.  A blue glow filled the cockpit.

             Then she took her quarterstaff and started bashing.

             Kylo’s lightsaber was already blazing in his hand by the time he hit the shore.  He was winded, filled with indescribable pain away from which he had to divert almost all his energy, and heavy with seawater and disbelief.  His clothes clung to him, water running off of them.  Grains of sand dotted his drenched hair, streaked his face, weighed down the spaces between his toes … he reflexively eyeballed his boots, still abandoned on the sand, then stared at his once-personal TIE silencer.  It was completely gutted from the inside, armament-systems devastated, com-systems obliterated, all hope of leaving the moon or reaching out to his fleet destroyed, possibly permanently.  He took a ragged breath.  “ _That’s my ship!_ ” he bellowed uselessly down the shore.

             Rey jumped from the climbing-side of the craft and landed softly on the beach below, quarterstaff in hand.

             Still a good distance away, they looked upon each other with their own eyes. 

             BOOM. 

             A cloud of smoke burst out of the well-and-truly scavenged TIE silencer behind Rey.  Combined with the breeze drifting along the shoreline, it stirred the dark waves of hair now streaming behind her, untamed and brilliant and rebellious to the last.

             Kylo actually took a step backwards. 

              _I hope you remember,_ Rey sent him, plainly, purely, _that the darkness inside of you knew when to retreat._

             And then she was running like hell — or no, she was shifting like the light — hightailing it off the beach, heading for the wilderness of the jungle.     

             Kylo lurched after her, hampered by the saltwater, the sand, the frenzied pace of his galaxy-wide search, and as if that weren’t enough, _being_ _severely wounded and_ _battling asteroids_ , but he ran after her all the same.  She could sense every barely-restrained breath of him, and in the twilight now descending over the beach, she could see the red glow of his lightsaber glistening off of the wet rocks, the tree-fronds, anything reflective. 

             As Rey reached the edge of the jungle, she swung her quarterstaff, and there the red glow was joined by an icy-blue one.  With one quick, circling motion, she sliced through the vines in her path and plunged into the tropical underbrush.

             The sight of it actually brought Kylo to a complete stop.  She’d married her weapon to the one that should have been his.  She’d taken the broken crystal of his grandfather’s lightsaber, damaged by their all-too-even match in Snoke’s throne room, and rewired her staff into some sort of wild, new, double-edged light-staff experiment.

             As Rey ran, she could feel Kylo’s scorching pain, his dazed intrigue, and his all-consuming outrage — oh, an entire _lifetime’s_ worth of outrage — and after a few moments she finally heard him bellowing louder, heard the sounds of him smashing _more_ things on his own wrecked ship, before he eventually plunged after her into the trees. 


	7. Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You ran from me,” he forced himself to enunciate every syllable, “as if I wouldn’t chase you.” 
> 
> _I survived the desert. I will survive you._

            “Come out here and face me!” Kylo roared, his lightsaber illuminating the dark, thickly-wooded jungle around him.  He turned in a measured circle, scanning, scrutinizing.  Fallen leaves crunched under his step; sand-dredged as he was, somehow he’d had enough presence of mind to pull his boots back on.  He pushed through the force with all his currently-available might to pinpoint her location, but the effort it took to close the gaping wound still ripping white-hot flames through him was too much.  He was blind.

            Rey wasn’t.  She’d been reading.  She’d been practicing.  And she’d had more than a little guidance, from the only two people who were still somewhat available to provide it to her.  She was full of the force, and she knew all too well how to survive.  Rey was no Sith lord, but she _was_ a kind of scavenger-lord.  In a way, she was in her element.  In another way, for once, she was infinitely more prepared than Kylo Ren had ever been.

            She could sense that being so hobbled he couldn’t root out her location absolutely terrified him to the core, though he’d never willingly admit it.  Was a secretly-terrified Kylo more dangerous than an openly-furious one?  Rey didn’t know.  Part of her didn’t care. 

            She felt strong.  She had the time.  She meant to find out.

_What exactly are you doing here?_ Her question hovered out to him invisibly, over the force.

            Kylo wheeled around, glowering savagely into the nothingness.  “The same thing as you,” he spat out, over-enunciating as per usual. 

_Oh, were you forced to find sanctuary from a monster too?_

            He wheeled again, then exhaled sharply, narrowing his eyes.  “I told you that I would find you.”  He paused for a mere moment before searing out at her, condemnation in every growled consonant, “I didn’t _even know if you were hurt!_ ”

            Rey almost lost her concentration over _that_.  Almost, but not really.  _Seems like you don’t care so much about my well-being now_ , she sent him instead.

            Kylo gritted his teeth.  “You think I’ll let you have the advantage over me with that ... that _thing_ you’ve made out of _my_ lightsaber?”

_If this lightsaber was yours, then why do you carry that red monstrosity?_

            He gripped the hilt of his chosen weapon more tightly, clearly insulted.  “I warn you,” he said, his eyes searching for her even if his force-senses could not, “The Jedi aren’t cut out for such willful destruction.”

_It seems YOU are_ , Rey sent, quietly.

            “Yes, I am,” he retorted, lower, trying a different track.  “Show yourself.  You _will_ face me like you’re supposed to.”  He could feel her laughing in his head defiantly, the reflection of it echoing through the force.  It knifed a truly bizarre combination of emotions through him, made up of rage and hunger, as well as something he outright _refused_ to examine, particularly now that it took almost all his strength to stem the wound coursing through him.  “Stop that!” he ordered her.  “There are _rules and orders_ to this sort of thing, you know!”

_Yes,_ she almost snorted _,_ her heart hammering away behind her temporary force-block, _we’re both such sticklers for rules and orders_. 

            Kylo’s snarl was loud as he sliced wrathfully into a nearby plant.  It fell before him lifelessly, sizzling.

            Rey waited, then sent more.  _Suppose I DO face you?  What then?_

            “We’ll battle,” he declared, the obvious thrill that the idea gave him simmering a little too clearly in his voice, “and I’ll defeat you.  I have foreseen it,” he intoned, blowing one sopping strand of hair out of his face in a flick of frustration.

_You’re not much of a fortune-teller, Ben._

            That name on her lips — or rather, on her force-floating sentiments — proved too much for him; for a few moments he shouted bloody murder as he slashed the rest of the jungle underbrush around him, reducing it to ribbons.  He stumbled back, groaning, his thoughts starting to swim.

_Finished?_

            “ _You_ blew up the panel on my ship, didn’t you?”  His accusation was sudden.  “Somehow, you did this to me.  Weakened me.  Tried to kill me,” he shouted, feverishly.

_I did not_ , Rey sent back, half-surprised at his conclusion on this point — and half-satisfied, oddly enough, that Kylo Ren finally felt what it meant to fear for his life at her hands, as she once did from his. _On your ship, I thought I was dreaming.  I couldn’t reach you._ Her senses settled down slightly.  Only slightly.  Extremely slightly.  _Did you reach ME, or did you dream?  When I escaped that last asteroid, did you try to help me?  Why would the darkness let you do that, Ben?_

            Everything about him constricted, from his stance to his fevered gaze.  “You’ve gone to ground, Rey; you may have confidence now.  I don’t know how you’re doing this, what kind of Jedi trick you’re playing.  But I know you.  You don’t understand the ways of the force like I do, not yet.”  His grip on the saber seemed to falter briefly.

            A beat.  _What happens after you defeat me?_ Her unexpected question was soft.  Dangerous.

            His eyes went dark.  Why would she ask that, mirroring his usual tone?  “Then I claim you, and you join me.  Just as it's supposed to be.”

            Another beat.  _What does claiming mean to you?_

            Slowly, he breathed.  Turning, looking.  “Come here and find out.”

            One last beat.  _Have you ever ... claimed anyone … before?_

_**Not completely, not like this.**   _She could sense the answer somewhere deep within Kylo’s diminishing mental guard; he certainly hadn’t given it freely.  _Then how do you know what it means,_ she sent him, more softly, more dangerously, _or even that it will work?  How do you know it would mean the same thing to me?_

            “Stop pulling things out of my _head!_ ” he hissed, slashing at the only branch that had survived his tantrum moments ago. 

            Rey rolled her eyes.  _You’re such a child, Ben._

            “I’m older than _you!_ ” he roared, only further proving her point — and then he realized it, and thus he sputtered out a loud, irritated snarl.  His vision was getting cloudy.

_How many minds have you peered into?_ She seemed to be shaking her head at him, although he still couldn't see a blasted trace of her.  _Don’t you think it’s fair that you know what it feels like?_

            His fists contracted around the hilt of his lightsaber.  His vision swam.  “I came for you," he kept going, doggedly.  "I tore … tore across the galaxy for you.” 

_That you did._ Nonchalant.  Nothing to sense here.  _Such a long way, too._

            “You’re mine,” he persisted, as defiantly as she.  “You belong to me.”  He’d allowed himself to be made into a monster in his younger days, and Rey could now see that his younger self was indeed still inside of him, drowning, twisted darkly — he still grasped at possession, the only feeling he seemed to understand.

_How do you expect to get out of here, Ben?_ Rey pushed on; Kylo’s relentless misunderstanding on the concept of ownership would have to wait another day. _You rushed ahead of the First Order, didn’t you?  They don’t know where you are.  Even if they did, they don’t have any pilots strong enough with the force to get through that sodding asteroid field._

            He swallowed, but his look was utterly savage.  “You ran from me,” he forced himself to enunciate every syllable, “as if I wouldn’t chase you.” 

_I survived the desert.  I will survive you._ Through the force, Rey’s voice was practically a light of its own, piercing invisibly through the dark jungle.  _Do you know how long you’re going to last out here?  Will the dark side help you eat and drink?  Can the First Order find you shelter?  Are any of those bucketbrains friend enough to keep watch for you in the night?_

            He scowled, but he actually swayed.  An unbidden groan escaped him. 

            Gods, she could feel how much he hated her seeing him like this.  She leaned forward, pressing her unexpectedly dark pronouncement into the very front of his swimming realization: _If you hurt me, if you kill me, you’ll - never - set - foot - off – this - moon - again._

            Kylo dropped to one knee.  “Why can’t you _fall?_ ” he fought to the last, dragging out a ragged gasp.  The lightsaber slipped out of his grip.  Its riot of reflected red light sputtered out as it thumped to the jungle floor. 

            With a final rake of effort, his malfunctioning senses rammed into focus.  **_THERE._** Kylo threw back his head to see Rey standing along the arm of a tree high above him, quarterstaff in hand, a wild, stunning, blue-white brightness merged at the very corners of her.  Kylo reached out an arm, curled all of his gloved fingers.  He’d fly her down here _so blasted fast_ — but his arm wasn’t out, and his fingers weren’t extended at all.  Too late.  All too late. 

            It was she who won this battle, the one he’d pictured going quite differently for so long.

            Damn this wound.  Damn this attachment.

            “Damn you, scavenger,” he growled, rasped.  Then it was he who knew no more. 


	8. Whirlwind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His interior voice was growing darker by the second. **_Do you have any idea how fast I can fly you down here? Do you realize there’s no one to stop me?_**
> 
> She grasped the branch more tightly. Reflexively. _I’M here. I’D stop you._

            Humid.  **_The broken Jedi temple._   _The damned heat._**

            Kylo gasped.

            Singed leaves surrounded him, and waves crashed in the distance.  **_Not the Jedi temple.  And there was heat, but very little light.  
_**

            Kylo sputtered, coughed.  Squinted.  His wound felt different, and he looked down to see it wrapped anew.  No.  It was wrapped _better_ , not just anew.  His eyebrows twitched, contorting.  Rey had been here.  The humid breeze slithered over the exposed skin surrounding his improved bandages; he was shirtless, his tunic folded haphazardly next to him.  The realization seemed to stab through him anew. 

            She’d _touched_ him. 

            She’d pulled off his tunic to treat this damn wound, and then she’d left him here in this damned jungle, on this damned moon.  She’d wrecked his starship.  His _favorite_ starship, he understood suddenly, teeth-grittingly, now that it was gone.

            He paused, willing his mind to still, and narrowed his eyes.

            Damn it all to hell, she’d _touched_ him, and it hadn’t roused him.  He hadn’t even felt the ghost of her hands on his skin.

            He took a breath, still ragged, and became aware of a fabric-swaddled bundle lying at his side.  A swift poke determined that it contained berries, seeds, and some kind of rounded gourd filled with water, closed with a rough-carved cork.  Kylo stared.  “Did you carve your own _cork?_ ” he growled into the jungle, his mind swimming too much to react to anything else. 

            It slowly dawned on him that the pain sweeping through his body had backed off a bit.  Suspicion, dark and dangerous, filled him instantly.  Kylo went silent, slipping back into walling up his thoughts from the force with an injured semblance of his old, well-practiced ease.

_Blast it._

            The switch in the force that Rey had been able to turn on earlier winked out of its temporal existence.  Kylo would be able to sense the force-lined corners of her again, at least in theory.  A fluttery, deep-seated sense of embarrassment wafted around inside Rey’s mind, but she was in _no mood_ to investigate why.   

            She sighed.  She couldn’t maintain such exquisite control of the force forever, even _if_ her two guides had gamely shown her the way.  A shadowy part of Rey had to admit that such extended powers — to “see” without being seen — would have given her a wonderful advantage going forward, particularly when she had to share an abandoned moon with a cipher like Kylo Ren.  Still, the thought made her feel slightly guilty; after all, it was the Sith who yearned for similar advantages and control over others’ minds.  Rey had come to the conclusion, relatively recently, that the Sith and the Jedi were far more alike than most of the ancient ones wanted to admit.  The two factions had certainly shared similar fears about each other, once upon a time.

            Force-theory aside, Plan B was well underway now.  Kylo’s lot would _have_ to stand with hers.  They’d likely kill each other on this moon, but Sith-leanings or no Sith-leanings, Jedi-background or no Jedi-background, Kylo’s pampered First Order experience certainly wouldn’t let him make it out alive without calling upon the experience of a scavenging queen like herself. 

            Rey bit back a smile at the new phrase flittering around in her brain: _scavenger queen._   Why not?  As far as nicknames went, it wasn’t as magical as Finn and Poe’s “wizard,” but it certainly sounded better than the “damn you, scavenger” flung at her by that spacer-maniac with an authoritarian complex.

            She placed both hands behind her head, reclining back along the broad arm of yet another tree atop a high, sandy hill.  Like her perch last night, it overlooked the cove in which both their dead ships lay.  Far below, waves lapped rhythmically against her shuttle, and the tide rolled to its infinite conclusions mere feet from Kylo’s scuttled TIE silencer.  Such watchful ground seemed the right place to retreat for now, as Rey stared up at the dawning light over the swaying tree-fronds. 

            Just wait until he realized she’d taken his lightsaber.

            In the distant jungle, a livid roar rang out, frightening flying jungle creatures from their slumber.  For a moment, all was roaring, mixed with a massive flurry of wings taking to the sky.

            One corner of Rey’s lips turned skyward.  That didn’t take long.

 

***

 

            The day passed relatively oddly.  Rey could occasionally hear Kylo crashing around both inside and along the fringes of the jungle.  At least he didn’t seem to be going the wrong way.  His progress was punctuated by sporadic bellowing, and the occasional force-thrown object.  Rocks, she deduced.  Sometimes sticks.

            It became increasingly hard for Rey to bite back her incredulous laughter.  Sticks and stones might break a dark order’s drones, but Kylo’s wrath would not help him.  Not much, at any rate. 

            She understood why he ranted and raved, at least according to force-theory: the Sith always called upon an onslaught of raw emotions to access the force.  Hatred.  Rage.  Passion.  Such feelings proved the quickest means to their dark ends.  Still, Kylo seemed to engage in this practice so far beyond the pale that Rey hardly knew what to call his particular technique.  Surely it served to frighten and intimidate all those blasted First Order bucketheads, but did he honestly think it was wise to try and scare or intimidate her?  _Now?_

            Rey may have ached to flee so far from her friends, may have feared to lose her new, still-adjusting life within the greater galaxy, but she was hardly scared of him now.

            He _had_ scared her, once, when she’d first seen him.  Until he took off his mask.  Until he suggested that he was more man than monster.  Until _she’d_ proved she was no powerless scavenger, but a force to be reckoned with.

_Why did he always retreat back into the monster?_

            Rey’s brows knit, completely lost in memory now.  Remembering.  Considering.

            On Starkiller Base, Ben had unmasked himself to the girl, to Rey from nowhere.  And he’d taken off his mask _before_ Rey turned out to be a powerful being who shocked him by fighting him off — who defied him, even now, by matching him in every possible way.  He’d taken off his mask for the nobody, not the somebody.  _Why?  By the gods, why?_ He’d been drawn here because he … he wanted her, certainly, but it went far beyond that.  It must.  Rey’s brows scrunched together.  She’d shoved her realizations about Kylo’s desire so far down inside of her memory that she wasn’t sure she could ever stoop far enough to examine them again.

            Realizing that Kylo’s trek through the jungle had gone silent for some time, Rey snapped herself out of her reverie.  _He’s close now._ She sensed him lurking in the shadow of his TIE silencer on the beach.  Soundlessly, Rey rolled to her side on the branch, peeping at the small black dot below from within the tree-fronds. 

            Kylo was sitting in the sand, shadowed by the bent wing of his craft, seemingly glowering out at the calm surf.  His tunic was back on, and he was gingerly looping his sand-dusted cape back around himself, too, for a shield against the late-afternoon sun. 

            Hesitating, Rey watched the sullen black dot of him for awhile.  To see or not to see? 

**_I know you’re there,_** he sent her, suddenly, simply.  It was floated to her through the force; he didn’t shout it up to her, but she heard it all the same.

            Rey’s heart whammed inside her chest.  She felt extremely annoyed at herself for deliberating so long.  Letting Kylo cause such a reaction within her annoyed her _even more_ , though, and she rolled her eyes as she sat up, gripping the branch beneath her with both hands.

            He exhaled.  Sharply.  **_You think you can ignore me again?  Is that truly your plan?_**

            Rey bit back a threatening corner of her lips.  It wasn’t a guilty expression that she was wearing — instead, she was trying not to snarl back at him, trying not to answer barbs with barbs, as was their usual way.  She had to _focus_ , Kylo’s guilt-trip be damned.

            **_We’re the only two people on this rock, thanks to you, and you’re not going to talk to me?_**   His interior voice was growing darker by the second.  **_Do you have any idea how fast I can fly you down here?  Do you realize there’s no one to stop me?_**  

            She grasped the branch more tightly.  Reflexively.  _I’M here.  I’D stop you._

            Even far above him, she heard his reaction echo off of the water. 

            Was it a sniff?  A snort? 

            No.  He chuckled. 

            It was brief, short, and very low, but it was definitely a scornful bark of laughter.  Rey’s mouth rebelled against her earlier bite, now curling into sheer, unmitigated ferocity — this was the one and the only time Ben had ever laughed in her presence, possibly in _anyone’s_ presence, and _that_ was the shape it took?

            He inhaled.  **_Let’s find out what you really intend to do._**

            Suddenly she was moving, her hands slipping from the branch, her body careening like a spry asteroid into the air.  She spun once in an unbidden, interrogatory circle — his hand was aloft, far below.  He saw plainly that she wasn’t wearing her lightstaff, nor was she carrying his lightsaber.

            Equally suddenly, Rey brought her hands together in a loud clap.  She stopped moving, stopped careening.  Instead, she dropped, landing surprisingly gently on her toes and rolling into a sort of sandy slide onto the hill below her surrendered tree-perch.  She grasped a large rock for balance and glared as hard as she could at the black dot of Kylo underneath the ship’s wing below — he’d become a slightly-larger dot now, since she was a bit closer.

            He was on his feet.  Even at this distance, she could sense his considerable wince.  Using the force on her meant he had less control over his injuries.  She could also sense that he marveled at how much stronger with the force she was now — though she couldn’t tell whether it was _really_ marveling or just intense irritation.  Kylo was still very much winded but strong enough to wall her out again.

            “You wastoid!” she yelled at him, reminded him.  “You hurt me, you kill me?  You die.  Here.  Alone.  The First Order won’t even have a pauper’s grave for you.”

            “I’m not — _I’m not trying to kill you!_ ” he rumbled, then shouted, the vehemence of it racking more pain into his side.  She could feel that too.

            “Then what _are_ you trying to do?” she yelped down the hill.

            “Where’s my lightsaber?” he demanded. “Where’d you put that — _thing_ , of yours?”

            “Somewhere safe!”  She curled her free fist.

            “I’m not going to let you take your revenge on me, while I’m unarmed, like I don’t — like I don’t _matter_ to you, on some galaxy-forsaken moon,” he growled, moving closer to her.

            “Revenge for _what?_ ”  Rey almost had to physically make herself shove Kylo’s phrasing aside; it was her turn to be demanding.  “Revenge for _what?_ ” she repeated, realizing she sounded kind of inane.  Not that Kylo would notice.

            “Revenge for kidnapping you,” he hissed, and then the rest broke out in a shadowy rush, “and for killing Han Solo, whom you never truly knew anyway.  For making you admit the truth, about Luke, about the Jedi, about your parents, which you couldn’t admit to yourself.  For refusing to bend, to break, to your will in the force, which you don’t yet understand.  For showing you a future that I _know_ you want, yet you can’t seem to allow yourself to be part of.  For looking at you, in the hot springs, when you still refuse to admit — ”

            A loud, low shushing sound, rather like air slowly rushing out of a punctured parachute, was starting to slip out of Rey. 

            It made Kylo cut himself off, but only for a moment.  His eyes stared up at her, so black, so fixed, that they seemed to threaten to consume the whole of her right there on the hill.  “And you’ll want revenge for what I’m _going_ to do: execute every single one of those liars and thieves you keep company with.  Starting with your beloved traitor.”

            Rey was sliding, no, she was _running_ down the hill, not pulled by the force, nor compelled by Kylo’s force-grasp, but running of her own accord, faster and faster, her desert-step more practiced on this kind of ground than his, pounding across the sand toward him.  She didn’t have her lightstaff right now.  She didn’t need it.  She’d kill — fine, fine, the light inside of her would win this hour, she’d _wound_ — him with her bare hands.

            “You haven’t killed them, and you _won’t_ ,” she hollered through her teeth, her bare, outstretched fingers curling. 

            Kylo’s outstretched fingers curled too, again.  Still gloved. 

_Nothing ever changed._

            They almost knocked each other over with their mutual whirlwind.  He was still badly wounded, though, so Rey concentrated all her force on that — he dropped to one knee, grunting — and she flew at him with her nails bared first, then with fists closed.  Her fist connected squarely with his cheek, wrenching him back.  He growled, turning, and caught her wrist.  Rey let her other fist fly, too, but Kylo now seized both of her wrists, stumbling a bit as he drove his heavier weight to roll her onto the sand.  He bent, holding her off, holding her down.

            “Rey!” he shouted.

            “Let go of me!” she shouted back.  This close to him, literally in his grasp, feeling the heat of his hands at her wrists, Rey was unavoidably caught up in a rush of reflected force-emotions, inexorably linked so close that she couldn’t tell which one of them anything actually came from.

_F **u** r **y** … r **e** l **i** e **f** … w **o** n **d** e **r** … _

_Jealousy … fear … heat …_

**_Des_** _i_ **_r_ ** _e … **p** o **s** s **e** s **s** i **o** n … **l** i **g** h **t** …_

_Attachment … connection … darkness …_

            “What - in - blazes?” she cried, too furious for more articulate words.  It was too much, too strange, too wild.  They were too tumbled together to parse anything apart.  Rey struggled for purchase, got to one knee, and brought her other leg around to sweep-kick Kylo off his feet.

            He yelled as he fell to the sand, immeasurable pain slicing through his body.  “ _Rey_ , for the love of — “

            “You don’t love _anything_ ,” she cut him off, screaming, jostled to the sand again by his fall, realizing he hadn’t let go of her wrists.  She kicked out at him, her boot catching him squarely on his wound-side.

            His roar was thunderous and he released her automatically, force-pushing her away from him across the sand.  His eyes scorched hers -– not with fire, but with pain, with visible hurt.  Not just from her attack.  “You’re so right,” Kylo hissed out, tearing his eyes away.  One arm lay dully at his side, his hand balled into a fist.  The other hand practically shook as he held it over the wounds at his side.  He didn’t beat himself, though, not like he had on Starkiller Base. 

            He breathed heavily; he didn’t look at her.   

            Didn’t?   Or couldn’t?

            And why couldn’t he?

            Once again, just as it had about the Skywalker family, the force sang Rey the answer: _because he lied, of a sort.  Ben did love something, but the monster inside of him wouldn’t survive the complete self-sacrifice that love might someday take._

            Dazed, she realized Kylo hadn’t even struck out at her.  He’d simply held her off.  Her chin lifted furiously; she felt insulted.  She was his opposite, his mirror.  Why wouldn’t he let her fight him?  He’d wanted that all along, didn’t he?  Was it just because he was weakened?  Because they couldn’t battle with lightsabers?  Did his bizarre conception of honor make it seem like an unfair fight, like they didn’t … matter … to each other, as he’d said before?

            Rey struggled to her feet.  Kylo did the same. 

            He lurched, cursed.  He knelt.  He was going to pass out again.

            Rey bent slightly, breathing, bracing her hands on her knees.  Her eyes never left his face.  “I won’t help you this time,” she whispered, all too fiercely.  Bewildered as she was, she was deeply, astonishingly angry.  It took all her concentration to keep from jumping over the dark edge of that anger. 

            “Don’t,” he murmured back at her, swallowing — or was it a dare?  Rey wasn’t sure.  Even as the excruciating blackness swam up to drown Kylo again, a faint leer ghosted over his unfocused features, all too distantly: “You’ve got a lot of rage, for a Jedi.”     

            Rey blew a hair out of her face with exasperation as she stared over at the depleted, unconscious black pool of Kylo’s shipwrecked body on the sand.  How much force-healing was she going to have to use this time?  It was still a new and highly delicate process for her, made all the more difficult by the fact that she wasn’t supposed to heal the current Supreme Leader completely.  It wouldn’t be tactical.  It wasn’t the plan.  It couldn’t be done, not with the monster in there.

            A blue-white glow winked into existence at her side.  “He always had a gift for saying so much, with so few words.”

            “So do you, you know,” Rey replied, already pushing up the sleeves of her arm-wraps. 

            Luke’s force-ghost gave a translucent, resigned sigh.  “Family trait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited to add: I've got a (tiny) [Tumblr](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com), at least for now, to hold occasional brainstormy, fandom-y things going forward. 
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely comments! They are the caffeine running through my veins, urging me to keep at this addictive scribblething. :)


	9. Waterfront

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you my enemy, Kylo?” she asked, quietly.
> 
> His eyes hardened. “Yes.”

            Kylo was still on the beach when he drifted back into consciousness.  Through the force, Rey could feel his senses reactivate and begin to solidify.  Pain appeared first, knifing through him ever-so-slightly less than before.  He felt the coolness of the night, heard the incessant roll of the tide … he estimated the hours he must have been out … and finally, above all, he registered the loss of his conscious control, the cracks in the rigid self-command that tenuously stitched the lot of him together. 

            He was surprised to feel less wounded, again.  He was even _more_ surprised to find Rey sitting cross-legged several paces away, watching him. 

            An illuminated glowrod sat on the sand beside her, casting a soft blue radiance over the waterfront.  On a moon without any other source of light — no cities, no towns — the stars that glittered high above the cove formed a bright, endless ocean in the sky.             

            It was beautiful. 

            Neither of them noticed.

            “Are you crazy?” Kylo rumbled, jerking upwards, realizing only his head moved with ease.  He grunted, willing his tormented body onto its side, then pushed himself up onto one arm.  He seemed to be lying atop an improvised blanket of rough muslin cloth.

            "Stop moving around,” Rey snapped.  Then, too calmly, too casually: “You’ll rip your bandages.”

            He stopped moving and stared.  “I thought you weren’t going to ‘help’ this time," he said flatly, some sort of hidden insinuation stabbing out at her from within his dark tone.

            Rey pursed her lips.  It took a lot, still, to keep her force-walls up, particularly when he was so close by.

            “I see,” he said, even though he didn’t — not exactly.  His face twitching, Kylo placed a hand on the fresh dressings that now crossed his bare chest.  His tunic lay beside him, again, crumpled into an irritated little pile this time.  One brow rose over his otherwise-controlled gaze.  “The Jedi side of you wins again.”

            “You’re not very grateful.”

            He inhaled fast.  “I _wouldn’t even be here_ if you had just … ” but there, suddenly, Kylo trailed off into a scowl.  Furious as he was with her, for some reason he didn’t want to get into the particulars of how and why they had both wound up on this damned beach right now.  He sent a testing glance around the cove, as if to change the subject.  “Why didn’t you take to your shelter, instead of playing medic with your enemy?”

            “Are you my enemy, Kylo?” she asked, quietly.

            His eyes hardened.  “Yes.”  He seemed … pleased. 

            Rey’s eyes, the same shade as his, hardened too.  “How about you, Ben?”

            His whole demeanor stiffened visibly.  “Stop playing games,” he grumbled, once more pushing himself to sit up.

            “I didn’t take to my shelter because you don’t invite a sand-snake into your sanctuary.”  Rey shook her head at his struggling frame.  “If you faint again, I’ll have to leave you here.”

            He exhaled, stopped, glared.  A peculiar flash of embarrassment echoed in the force between them until he pushed it out of her notice.  Amazingly, and likely because of that hidden embarrassment — or so she decided, squinting over at him — Kylo faltered his way back down.  There was something deeply, insanely frustrated about the _whump_ his head made against the cold, sandy shore.

            “You’re too heavy to move alone, you know,” she went on.  Casual.  Nonchalant.  Same old routine.  Still sitting in her meditative pose, Rey looked a little too purposely-comfortable.  She could tell the position irritated him; it reminded him of Luke, or of other, smaller Jedis, long lost within his own dark history.  “How could I lug you anywhere?” she continued to chide him.

            He glowered up at the stars.  “You could use the force.”

            “To float you around?”  Rey’s lips twitched — no, quirked.  Hers was the lighter version of Kylo’s own lip-twitching tendency.  “Seems more like _your_ operating mechanism, Ben.”

            He growled wordlessly, turning his face away from her and the glowrod.

            Rey waited.  She knew he could feel her eyes gazing over in his direction.  Something about it bothered him.  Was he cold?  His tunic was piled next to him, but his cloak was near her.  (Both black garments were relatively sand-free now; she’d had to rinse and leave them to dry in the late-afternoon sun while she set about force-healing Kylo’s still-considerable wounds.  She’d loathed having to do it, but sand didn’t pair well with bandages.)  Rey had already donned her own light-colored cloak.  Tropical or not, nights on this unknown moon proved a little colder than those she’d been accustomed to on Jakku.  Once again, no matter where she went, the past always seemed to lurk nearby, ready to haunt her even through something as simple as temperature.

            “You’re not going to turn me,” Kylo muttered suddenly.

            A pause.

            “Who said I was trying to do that?” she asked.  Sod it, her tone was _too_ casual now.  Too walled-off.

            “You don’t _have_ to say it,” he roiled, turning his head back from the reflected shadows to look at her.  His jaw pulsed.  “Everything you do, every move you make, you’re entwined with that damn light.”

            Another pause. 

            “Well,” Rey began, slowly, albeit cheerfully, “if I put out this glowrod, it’ll get pretty cold.”

            “ _You know what I mean_ ,” he ground out. 

            She fell silent.  It hadn’t really occurred to Rey, at least not openly, that she haunted _Kylo’s_ head too.  She filled up his brain, she troubled him with her light — night and day, damned and not damned.  Neither of them was completely free of the other.  Neither of them was completely free of light or of darkness.  They were neither Jedi, nor Sith.

            He was looking at her.  Watching her read him.  Reading her right back.

            His eyes were … hungry, she sensed suddenly, and not for rations.  Kylo was only half-dressed, after all, for the second time that day.  Well, she’d _had_ to do that.  She hadn’t _looked_ , of course, not like _that_.  She couldn’t apply clumsy-healing and salves and bandages _underneath_ a shirt.  Rey tore her gaze from the pull of his, feeling her cheeks grow hot, sensing her own flash of exasperation over the blush that escaped her wall of control.

            “Why do you always,” he began, far too quietly for anyone’s sane comfort, “pretend that you don’t — ”

            Rey wasn’t about to let him continue.  She stood up all too fast, calling his cloak to her hand with the force. 

            Kylo started up again at her sudden motion, pushing himself to his knees so quickly that he had to stifle a groan.  Exhaustion and suspicion poured out of his lacerated senses.

            Rey merely floated the old cloak over to him.  “It gets oddly cold here at night,” she said.  Sod it, her words were coming out too softly; she practically _mumbled_.  “You’ll want some cover.”  Her own cloak billowing slightly in the cove-breeze, she produced another glowrod from the rucksack fastened at her back.  Wordlessly, she lit the second rod.  She meant to leave.

            “ _Rey_ ,” Kylo said.  Blast him, he didn’t even put the cloak on.  He just held it, kneeling, breathing, staring fixedly at her.  “Look at me.”

            She turned away.  She felt the force grab her shoulder.

            "Don’t you _dare_ ,” Rey hissed, the pale curve of her jaw tightening, rebelling, recoiling in the opposite direction from Kylo’s force-grasp, “or I won’t come back in the morning.”  Her eyes were — but no, they couldn’t be — almost wet, and extraordinarily bright.

            Kylo exhaled.  As usual, he fought to keep something out of her senses, but she didn’t even reach out with her feelings to see what.  She didn’t have to.  With a fuming bark, he let her go, wincing with the new pain that the overreach with his splayed fingers had wrought. 

            Rey wasn’t looking at him as she hurried off into the jungle, but she knew his mouth was turned down at the corners, his head bent forward like a scolded, furious child, his eyes storming away.  “Good,” he hissed at her back.  “Don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITING NOTE: I’ve edited/re-worked this chapter quite a bit since its first posting, although the gist remains the same. Thanks, insomnia! Thanks, persistently-unsatisfied scribble-feelings! :P


	10. Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know what you’re doing.” Kylo didn’t move. “Treating me like some kind of pet droid that needs service.”
> 
> Rey couldn’t keep her brows from flying skyward; she almost burst into incredulous laughter. She could sense that doing so would hardly be advisable with the mood Kylo was in, however, and thus she warily stilled her response. “As far as pets go, you’d be the worst.”

            He stopped talking to her.

            It was amusing at first, and then annoying, and then just … routine.  Rey could sense that Kylo’s dark silence was meant as revenge, revenge for the many months she’d ignored him in their bond, for severely wounding him — _of course_ he still blamed her for that — for gutting his TIE silencer on an uncharted moon, for literally taking him out of First Order commission, and for apparently stealing both of their lightsabers so that the battle and triumph he’d envisioned could never take place.  Older, deeper vengeance was involved, too.  She’d rejected his offer to join him.  She’d run right back to her Resistance traitors _._ She kept _refusing_ to acknowledge that searing, aching, jealous whatever-it-was he held against her.

            His most current aggravation, though, actively seethed away inside of him: Rey didn’t seem to care whether he spoke to her or not. 

            Oh, _that_ bothered him most of all.

            Kylo kept to the beach, stubbornly taking shelter underneath and around his gutted ship, and Rey kept to parts unknown to him in the jungle.  He tried to follow her once, lightsabers and duels of destiny clearly on his mind, but he’d felt nauseatingly weakened, somehow.  He'd merely returned to the beach, refusing to lose his way completely in the terraformed tropical forest.  His senses remained destabilized, as he was too preoccupied with his own dark understanding of keeping his wounds closed to reach further.  For the first time in what seemed forever, Kylo felt disadvantaged by his fairly pampered existence on First Order starships.  As a youngling, he’d grappled with the sparse surroundings of Luke's Jedi-training school, but Kylo was no expert at wilderness-survival now. 

            It was Rey who knew how to survive on nothing.

            Every afternoon, she wandered down to “his” shore, oh so casually.  Kylo would either be sitting in the sand, glowering out at the cove, or else he’d be tinkering with the bones of his ship, glowering at the wreck of it.  Rey would leave him a fabric-swaddled bundle filled with a smattering of food supplies, mostly the same old berries and nuts, and always a freshwater-filled gourd-canteen.  Once she’d left him a dehydrated portion packet, too, but then she’d found it unused the next day in the remains of the bundle.  She’d taken it back with her, silently filing away the fact that Kylo didn’t even know how to use — or else _refused_ to use — the same kind of food that Rey had subsisted on for most of her life.

            He didn’t talk to her.  She didn’t care.

            Eventually he started looking at her again, though his look was more like a stare.  Kylo never merely looked; instead, his was a fixed expression at which it was purposefully hard to look back.  He’d stare at her, she’d plonk the bundle into the sand at a distance, and she’d turn on her heel and leave.

            Gods, what a pair they made.

 

***

 

            About a week passed by the sky-cycle before any change occurred.  Oddly, the change was Rey’s.  She arrived later than usual for her supply-drop off, in the evening rather than the afternoon.  She seemed rushed.

            The cove was awash in moonlight and shadows, punctuated by the endless roll of waves on the shore.  Rey noticed that Kylo hadn’t lit a glowrod, nor had he lit a fire.  She sensed him lurking underneath the shadow of his ship, arms hanging at his sides. 

            “You’re late,” he said, quietly.

            Her brows lifted, surprised to hear his voice.  “Still keeping military time?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from her in a tone she’d clearly learned from the likes of General Organa.  All thought of offering an explanation for her delay dissipated from Rey now. 

            “I know what you’re doing.”  Kylo didn’t move.  “Treating me like some kind of pet droid that needs service.”

            Rey couldn’t keep her brows from flying skyward; she almost burst into incredulous laughter.  She could sense that doing so would hardly be advisable with the mood Kylo was in, however, and thus she warily stilled her response.  “As far as pets go, you’d be the worst.”  Her cape rustled in the shore breeze, exposing the track of one leg — a boot, a trouser, the criss-cross of fabric that made up her tunic.  She frowned, very aware that Kylo was still staring.

            He shifted slightly, but his voice remained immobile.  “You’ll say I owe _you_ , now.  That my life is yours.  That I have a debt to pay.”

            Her grasp on the supply-bundle tightened.  “No one belongs to anyone, Ben.”

            “That’s _not_ true,” he shot forward several steps toward her, out into the moonlight.  There was something fierce and childlike about his look.  She felt him stifle a groan; his wounds were healing, slowly yet surely, but sudden movements still tore into them.  “That’s not true,” he repeated again, clenching a fist.

            Rey set her bundle onto the sand, then took a level breath as she stood straight up, facing him.  “I’m not yours.  You aren’t mine.”  Her face was white in the moonlight, her chin turned up.  She felt the dark track of his stare, but her cheekbones did not suffuse with heat.  “But you _do_ have a debt to pay, Ben Solo, to the galaxy, and to yourself.  To those that you and the First Order have harmed, both impersonally and personally.”

            His lips twisted.  He took a step.  He stopped.

            She waited.  The breeze moved only the strands of their hair, the folds of their clothes.

            “Don’t come back here,” Kylo ordered her, evenly.  His mental force-wall clanked down.  It shut her out as loudly as if it were made of black, impenetrable Quadanium steel.  “Stop leaving me your wretched scraps.”

            Something wavered along her jaw.  “That’s stupid, Ben.”

            “There’s no point, Rey,” he retorted.  “When the First Order arrives, you’ll be taken into custody.  You’ll have no trial.  Your sentence will be permanent.”  His tone was both impassive and commanding.

            “Yes, I’m _so_ impressed with their progress thus far.”  Rey actually snorted.  Her eyes lit up with spitfire, with starfire.  “When do you suppose they’ll find you, here, at the edge of uncharted Wild Space?  Did you tell your generals _exactly_ where you’d be searching before you flew off to fetch me like an arrogant sprog?"  Her chin lifted.  "Or did you think I’d be found and ‘claimed’ so easily that wide-ranging directions would suffice?”

            His hand curled with silent suddenness, force-pulling her slightly forward in the sand.  He could sense her heart trembling against her ribs.  The light side had never been very good at realizing how much power stemmed from their emotions.

            She resisted, force-pushing him backward against the shadows.  She could sense his wound still tearing painful lightning through him.  The dark side had never been very good at anything beyond temporary healing.

            Neither of them moved.

            Kylo could still feel the small bird of Rey's heart fluttering.  Standing on the same shore, she could feel his, too.  For a long moment, only the dark, insistent waves along the beach punctuated the scene. 

            Then he let her go, all over again. 

            He slid backward a couple of steps in the sand before Rey realized it and released her own hold on the force.  He stomped once, flinching slightly, steadying himself.  “Don’t bring any more of your pathetic little crumb-debts around here,” Kylo muttered.

            “You won’t last,” Rey replied, her brows knitting.

            “We’ll see,” they both said as one, glaring quietly at each other over the shared annoyance of speaking in unison.


	11. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She cleared her throat. “Do you … need an arm?”
> 
> "An arm?” he asked, quizzically.
> 
> "Yes, you know,” she continued, “to lean on.”

            A few more sky-cycles passed, all too slowly.  The terraformed moon’s tropical weather proved to be mild.  Balmy, often-humid days turned into cooler, breezier nights. 

            Rey tried not to think about Kylo.  She kept her force-wall well and truly up as the next few days went by without dropping off any fresh supplies, without hearing him rage around in the distance, without sending either of their senses in any particular force-driven way toward the other.  Still, she knew he would need food, and she knew he couldn’t heal completely without her.  Worse, she understood that the last freshwater gourd-canteen she’d left him wouldn’t last much longer — blast him, he hadn’t even _tried_ to find fresh water, like a mad spacer completely unused to survival. 

            Was he _trying_ to die?  Trying to make her prove that she’d prevent it?  That she, for some reason, in some strange way … cared?  Come hell or high sands, Rey was determined to wait this particular temper-tantrum out. 

            She had weathered far worse.

 

***

 

            Funny enough, it turned out to be the weather which broke their impasse.  After days of near-perfect climate, rain finally struck.

            The evening storm proved both sudden and drenching.  Younger, desert-trapped, Nobody-Rey would have loved to let the downpour saturate to her skin; desert rainstorms on Jakku had been exceptionally few and far-between.  A tropical rainstorm felt different, she discovered.  Different was good.  The rain here was warm and enveloping, and Rey could sense the water soaking into the jungle trees as if the entire moon sighed for it, relished it … small creatures in the jungle drank and bathed and chirped delightedly … as a guest-prisoner on their moon, Rey almost longed to join them.

            Unfortunately, there was another guest-prisoner on the same moon — one who remained badly wounded and in need of better, actual shelter.

_Sod it_ , Rey thought.  _Sod him._

            The very lightest corners of her awareness sparked to life.  _You should probably go before the storm gets worse,_ Luke’s voice suggested, albeit only inside of her head.  He had a calm, encouraging tone that he hadn’t seemed to be able to find on Ahch-To.

_Must I?_   Rey sent the question back to her now-occasional teacher over the force.  A stubborn shadow swirled across her senses.  _Ben’s still dangerous._

_So are you_ , the voice reminded her. 

            It didn’t take much more weighting of tactics before the Jedi side of Rey won out.  She fastened her cape around her slim frame, pulled the hood over her head, and took the quickest among her many secret paths through the fast-muddying jungle.  The night truly closed in as she reached Kylo’s beach, and she fired up her glowrod against it.  The dim, bluish light reflected off the last drinking gourd-canteen she’d given Kylo; he’d left it sitting on the sand, its cork open, to gather rain. 

            Well, at least he wasn’t devoid of _all_ survival sense.  When Rey finally caught sight of him, though, she was no longer sure.

            Kylo crouched in the pilot’s chair of his wrecked TIE silencer, trying to avoid the downpour from within the decimated cockpit.  Although he was wrapped tightly in his black cloak and hood, Rey still felt the track of his gaze from the moment she hit the sand. 

            As she drew near, her senses exploded with his force-reflected feelings.  He was nearly ravenous for food, and although his longing for water had been temporarily quenched by the rain, his wounds felt truly terrible now.  Rey cringed at the scope of them.  Like most dark side users, Kylo was holding his injury closed with his own brand of fury, mixed with plenty of resentment.  This had, naturally, led to the damage getting worse.  Rey had to bite her mental-tongue against thinking, all too force-loudly, _Supreme Leader, you’re an idiot_.  She didn’t know how she managed to keep from floating this particular sentiment over the force to him, but she must have been able to, since he didn’t flare up at her. 

            He just stared sullenly.  Some of his shields were still intact.

            Rey walked forward, stopping below the cockpit.  “Come on,” she called.

            Kylo blinked down at her. 

            She deduced him too tired, too hurt, and generally too proud to even register his wrath over her disobeying his orders to stay away.  Rey tipped her head back, holding her glowrod aloft to look up at him.  Rain dotted her face.  “You can’t stay here,” she persisted.

            Raindrops marked Kylo’s face too; there were holes in the hatch and the front glass window of the ship.  He looked around the cockpit, then at the beach, his jaw pulsing.

            “Truce?” Rey asked delicately, trying not to let the term rankle her rebellious nature too much.  She knew better than to hold out her hand; it would be too painful in memory for both of them if she did.  Instead she tried her best to keep her eyes from looking too soft, or too light, or whatever his unspoken problem was with her.  “You can still hate me if you like, but you can’t hurt or kill me.  You know the drill,” she said, using the kind of military terms that he might understand.  “Let’s get to higher ground.”

            As if on cue, the downpour grew stronger.  Pounding rain clanged down onto the metal hull of the starship, the sound practically drowning out thought. 

            Kylo’s head dipped. 

            Rey squinted.  Did he just _nod?_

            “All right,” he mouthed.

            “What did you say?” she hollered, over the rain.

            “All _right_ ,” he shouted, scowling. 

            There was a tiny spark of amusement playing over her lips, he saw; his eyes became two extremely silent pinpoints of fire.  Rey bit her mouth back at the corners, as though punishing it for its unruly betrayal of her calm.  Kylo’s eyes didn’t simmer down at that, however. 

            He was _such_ a nerve burner. 

            By the dim light of Rey’s glowrod, Kylo lifted himself out and shut the hatch with a lingering _clunk_ , then climbed down tentatively to the sand below.  Rey could feel his pain much more strongly now, and she almost felt sorry for him, again, as he stiffly made his way over to her.  Yet wounds or no wounds, it still took every fiber of Rey’s control not to step backward as Kylo advanced.  He finally loomed up beside her in the circle of reflected light, a hulking shadow personified.  It was easy to forget how imposing Kylo was when she kept her distance from him.

_I wish I’d wound up being taller_ , Rey thought, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly flooded with embarrassment; Kylo must have read her thoughts with very little effort, even at his greatly-reduced power in the force.

            His eyes, still on fire, only flickered over her briefly, however.  He said nothing.

            She cleared her throat.  “Do you … need an arm?”

            “An arm?” he asked, quizzically.

            “Yes, you know,” she continued, “to lean on.” 

            Deep, sharp offense over what Kylo perceived as an insult about his strength radiated out from him, almost bowling her over. 

            “Okay, okay,” Rey backed off, rolling her eyes.  She re-corked the canteen that Kylo had left sitting on the beach, and then popped it into the knapsack at her back.  “By the _stars_ , it was just a suggestion.  Follow me then.”

            Gods, it was all too blazingly bizarre.  What kind of mad mission had this become?

            As Kylo followed her wordlessly and somewhat rigidly through the jungle — mostly at her side, she noticed, neither too far behind, nor too far in front — she gradually became aware that he was still puzzling over her arm-question.  She became aware, too, that he was memorizing the path through the jungle underbrush for future use.  Paradoxically, he didn’t have to; from the moment she had arrived on this moon and formulated her plans, Rey supposed that Kylo would have to go along with her eventually.

            “Careful, this part is the hardest, and it’s slippery,” she said, feeling like a chatterdroid in comparison to her silently-looming companion.  She tied the glowrod around her belt, then grasped a vine.  Using the vine like a rope, she clamored up the shortest and easiest in a series of moss-covered boulders that sat at the base of a small embankment.  She made it to the top with relative ease, although the rain made her trek a little slower than usual.

            Kylo followed her lead, grasping another vine with both gloved hands as Rey neared the top.  Drawing on his dark strength, he made only the barest of grunts with the strain that climbing put on his force-controlled injury.  At the top, though, he did have to stand for a moment, breathing in and out.  Then, as he started to step off of the mossy boulder toward Rey, Kylo’s diminished physical reserves finally revealed themselves — his footing actually slipped, slid — and Rey grabbed him reflexively around his forearm, stilling and steadying him while his foot found safe purchase off of the moss.

            He stared over at her.  She hadn’t used the force.

            “See?  An arm,” Rey said, haltingly, lightly. 

            It might have been a joke, if Kylo could still recognize one.  His eyes flickered down to where Rey’s pale hand still clutched his black-clad forearm, offering balance.  They were both quite rain-soaked at this point; he could see that even her arm-wraps were saturated with water.  Suddenly, swiftly, Kylo’s force-reflected feelings saturated into Rey’s senses again.  He was ashamed of his weakness, his uncertainty, his hunger … and nobody had willingly touched him, even out of simple camaraderie, for years … they got strangled if they did … **_it took fear to rule the weak, just as it took anger to stem the tide of these wounds, this weakness …_**

            “Are you going to try and strangle me?” Rey asked flatly, pulling her hand away.

            “No,” he said, quickly.  His brow furrowed as he stood rather gawkily on his own two feet.  Beneath his hooded scowl, his eyelashes were dotted with water, just like hers had been in the hot springs on Hoth-4.  It seemed a lifetime ago.  His brow furrowed more deeply.  **_Put it back.  Give it back.  It belongs to me._**

            Rey exhaled, making a loud _tch_ sound as she turned her back.  Typical Kylo.  _This is HARDLY the time to start making demands for your lightsaber_ , she sent him.“Shelter’s not far,” she called out as she moved on, holding back her renewed annoyance at him as much as possible.  The rain-drenched jungle was looking a little less thick from their higher vantage point now. 

            Fuming slightly at Rey’s impertinence yet remaining oddly silent, Kylo followed her.  His step was a little more halting, and he drew back a little more from her side than before.  As Rey walked, now, the glowrod fastened at her waist shone down through her cape, making it look as though she were floating on a pool of light as she moved.

            He hadn’t been thinking about the lightsaber, much to his own dark sense of self-contempt.  He’d wanted her arm.


	12. Refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s home to _you?_ ” Rey pressed him, her eyes flashing in the rain. “Some cold, hulking starship, mindless squadrons marching around? Even better if it’s dotted with torture chambers, right?”
> 
> Kylo inhaled slowly. “That,” he said, leaning forward to some extent, “is not home to me.” A brief, bitter shadow passed over his gaze. “Home is something you make, or take. Something you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPACE-FANTASY-ARCHITECTURE NOTE: In my headcanon here, the builder's huts are shaped like small Tatooine farm-domes, with a fair amount of weatherproofed Empire/mining company/Jawa-style plating. Add green vines. Mix with mud, tropical flowers, and salt air. Let sit abandoned for decades. Serves: 2, potentially. :p

            A deeply green meadow loomed at the jungle's highest edge. 

            Dotted with the same bright flowers and enormous trees that grew all over the moon on which Rey and Kylo found themselves, this particular clearing was _also_ dotted with the small domes of long-abandoned, terraforming builder’s huts.  Lifetimes ago, the huts had served as temporary homes for engineers and construction technicians of the old Empire, charged with leading the moon’s terraform process.  The builders were gone now, however, and their tropical hideaway-project remained unused and forgotten — so much desolate beauty, in such a wild, unnatural place.

            Some huts were in a state of ruin, but most were well-preserved.  The domes’ arched, weatherproofed walls looked sturdy and strong against the rain.  The Empire could afford to build quite well when they wanted to, at least once upon a time. 

            One of the huts in the middle looked a little cleaner and more experimentally patched-up than the others.  A small vent of steam curled out of its chimney.

            Rey could feel Kylo’s eyes flickering everywhere, as if memorizing this moment, this spot.  As usual, something about the persistence of his gaze bothered her.  “Well,” she said.  His eyes moved to her, and her voice lost a bit of its casual lilt.  “I’ll make you a fire in one of these huts.  There’s food, too.  And you’ll feel … uh, feel better,” she concluded lamely.

            Kylo glanced at the hut with the chimney-steam.  “You’ve already got a fire in there.”

            “That’s mine,” Rey said.  There was something peculiarly tight about her voice.

            “Naturally.”  Kylo took a step toward the shelter in question.

            “You can’t come in _there_ ,” she burst out, rather abruptly.

            He turned and regarded her again.  “Why not?”

            “Because.”  Rey’s jaw pulsed; she felt Kylo experience an odd, out-of-body sensation upon witnessing that particular facial tic work its way, for once, over someone else’s features.  “I don’t want you to,” she went on, hesitating only slightly.

            “Why not?” he asked again, his lips twitching.  Was he _smiling?_

            She took a breath.  “Because I don’t trust you in my home,” she declared at last, and her words hung like a heavy flying-droid in the rain between them.

            Something cold and questioning swam into his eyes.  If Rey hadn’t known that Kylo had no proper feelings, she might have called it hurt.  “This is home to you?” he asked quietly, incredulously.  “This unorganized rock, where you crashed?”

            “We _both_ … ” Rey began, her temper flaring, but she trailed off.  It would indeed remain best to avoid details as to how they’d both found themselves here.  “It’s not exactly hideous, you know,” she argued, though she hardly understood why.  Why did she feel the need to defend this uncharted moon?  How did Kylo always manage to provoke her so easily?  “What’s home to _you?_ ” Rey pressed him, her eyes flashing in the rain.  “Some cold, hulking starship, mindless squadrons marching around?  Even better if it’s dotted with torture chambers, right?”

            Kylo inhaled slowly.  “That,” he said, leaning forward to some extent, “is not home to me.”  A brief, bitter shadow passed over his gaze.  “Home is something you make, or take.  Something you want.”

            “Well, then,” Rey replied, heart hammering, willing herself to lean forward too, “I _made_ that hut into a kind of home, and I _don’t_ want you burning it to the ground with any of your dark schemes.”

            He was looking at her strangely.  “Why did you tell me to come here with you?”

            “Because you’re _hurt_ , and you need _food_ , and you shouldn’t be out in this _storm!_ ” she yelped over the rain, exasperated. 

            His look turned even stranger.  “And are any of those things different right now?”

            Rey paused.  “No!” she finally tossed out, obstinately, refusing to give him an inch.  His eyes seemed to be lingering on her lips, and _that_ was far too strange to be tolerated.  She drew back, turned away, and checked her force-shields again.  She felt Kylo's eyes on her rain-saturated cloak.

            She heard him grumble wordlessly, somewhere deep in his throat.  “I won’t burn anything to the ground.”  A pause.  “I don’t have any lightning in my hands, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

            Her eyebrows went up and she practically reeled on him.  Was he making a joke?  But no, when her eyes met his, she saw he simply spoke the truth.  Kylo fed off of intense rage, certainly, but he wasn’t very good at lying or trickery.  There was a kind of honesty in that — a mad, twisted type of honesty, formed somewhere between the shadows and light shifting inside of him.  In fact, that twisted honesty was perhaps the _only_ straightforward thing about Kylo now.  Who needed guile when you had all the potential power of the galaxy swirling around in your head?  Rey squinted at him through the downpour, suspiciously. 

            “What?” he asked, an ill-hidden pang of exhaustion in his tone. 

            She sighed.  “All right.  You can come in.  But you can’t stay.  And above all, you won’t … ” but there, no, she trailed off again.  Rey turned abruptly and stomped over to the chimney-steaming hut.  A pool of light from the glowrod at her belt still floated along beneath her feet, lighting the way despite her fit of pique.

            “Won’t what?” Kylo asked, following after, albeit farther behind.  It was just as well.  She wouldn’t have answered anyway, and he didn’t want her to see his lips twitching. 

            By the time Kylo loomed into the entrance of the builder’s hut to take refuge from the rain, Rey had already been inside for a minute or so.  Her shadowy guest hovered back against the door. 

            For a long while, it seemed all he could _do_ was hover, the considerable intensity of his gaze taking in the room. 

            Warm flames sputtered low in a large, round fireplace.  Two small doors bordered the hearth, one on each side; it seemed this particular hut, while small, contained two additional chambers.  Rey was stirring the fire with a durasteel poker, her back to him.  Despite the bizarrely domestic scene, it was clear that this place no longer belonged to a terraform-builder of the old Empire. 

            It was fitted out for a scavenger queen now. 

            An improvised pipe-and-cog spit rotated mechanically above the fire.  She’d rigged a very large, round, metal helmet to hang from the spit by an Empire-forged chain.  The helmet held water, boiling softly, with something leafy in it — it smelled, if not exactly filling, at least hot and mildly alluring.  Rey added an outlandish, green-colored fuel to the fire.  It hissed and steamed a little higher, a little brighter. 

            Scavenged odds and ends glinted all around the small chamber, mostly metallic bits and wire coils, with some wild-foraged thingamabobs mixed in as well.  Moss.  Stakes.  Coils of vines.  Kylo recognized the berries and nuts that filled several wired-panel boxes, of course, and he could identify, too, a row of experimental gourd-canteens, featuring an array of corks that Rey had apparently improved upon over time.  Tools and partly-assembled inventions were scattered around at large and in-progress, their mechanized purposes unknown to him.  Did that panel look like something pried off of a Resistance shuttle?  Was that a — was that a tube from his TIE silencer’s subspace transceiver? 

            He did _not_ see any lightsabers, nor could he feel them calling to him.

            Rey was very aware that Kylo hadn’t moved from the doorway since he’d stepped inside.  Their mutual force-blocks remained intact, but Rey could still feel plenty of emotions stirring behind Kylo’s worn-out, wounded senses.  She felt a wave of admiration, which frankly shocked her.  Her eyes actually widened at the scope of it.  She sensed a sizeable amount of envious frustration, too, as well as an outpouring of resentment over her blatant piracy of his starship.  Looking deeper, suddenly unable to help herself, she felt a strange, indefinable ruefulness, and something about why-the-hell had it taken him so long to get here … a distant, simmering despair over the lack of lightsabers … and that same old vexation: the jealousy, the heat, the whatever-it-was that Kylo continued to block from her force-sight.

**_Out._** He surged the word to her over the force, his expression resolutely blank.

            Rey paused, momentarily glancing down at her feet.  “You don’t have to lurk,” she said, relatively softly.  She certainly wasn’t going to apologize, not to Kylo Ren, but she could, and did, adjust her tone a little.  “You can sit down.”

            He strode further inside, then turned and closed the door.

            “Oh.”  Rey took a step forward, as if to stop him.  Her cheeks felt hot.  From the fire.  From exasperation, at herself.  Obviously.

            Kylo’s gaze flickered over her now, studying her like he’d studied the room.  He paused.  Then, wordlessly, he turned to reopen the door, propping it ajar by leaning a metal stool against it.  The acoustics of the rainstorm echoed a little more loudly inside with the door cracked open, but at least no rain washed over the stoop.

            Rey quickly averted her attention back to the helmet-kettle above the fire.  “Hungry?” she asked, distractedly.  Once the word left her lips, she felt a rush of heat blaze over her cheeks again.  Gods, what was the _matter_ with her? 

            “Hmm.”  His rumble was inconclusive as to its meaning.  It did _not_ make her feel better.  She heard Kylo seat himself with some difficulty in one of the two ancient chairs beside the table.  The sound of him sliding a few sprockets out of the way soon followed.  Rey only _heard_ the sound of these movements, of course, because she was _definitely_ not going to look at Kylo until the flush of fire had left her face.

            “Don’t you require assistance?” he asked, his voice a little too quiet.

            “No.”  Though she kept her back to him, she could see his long, dark shape reflected in the sheen of a metal panel on the hearth.  “Thank you,” she added, bewilderingly.  She stirred the boiling substance with a ladle, one she’d spliced together out of a small pipe fitting, some wire, and a well-scrubbed filter.

            “What is that, over the fire?” Kylo asked, a little too calmly.

            “Stew?” she answered, although her statement came out sounding like a question.  _Sod it all, what a riveting conversation._   It seemed Rey couldn’t shake the color out of her cheeks.  “It’s got some nutty roots in it that I recognize, and some greens I know too.  I’ve eaten it before.  It's not poisonous.”  _Oh, for the love of the gods._

            “That sounds fine.”  There was something funny about Kylo's voice.  Rey looked at him; was he trying not to laugh?  No, of course not.  He’d just been making a concentrated study of the back of her head.  Soundlessly, he did the same to her features, now that she faced him.

            Rey finally noticed the distinct sound of dripping water inside the hut: both their rain-sodden cloaks were dripping slowly, rhythmically, onto the floor.  Automatically, she raised her free hand to unfasten the clasp of her cape, but Kylo’s gaze followed her motion, silently hovering at the only exposed skin near her neck.  She stopped herself, stiffening. 

            The spatial intimacy presented by sharing a hut with her self-declared enemy flooded over her.  This room drew them far closer than they’d been in over a year.  It was  a _real_ room this time, too, not just a shared projection in the force.  Rey felt … _bothered_ by it, she understood rather suddenly. 

            Odd.  She didn’t usually have to use the force to search her _own_ feelings. 

            Much like her dripping cape, Rey felt weighed down by her own awkwardness.  She held back a sudden wave of longing for Finn’s delighted grin, Poe’s easy laugh, BB-8’s obliging chirp, Chewie’s elated roar, even General Organa’s merry, knowing gaze … _I’m not even good at making small talk with my FRIENDS_ , she thought despairingly.  What chance did a desert-rat have for making peaceful overtures with the Supreme Leader of the Scar?

            Something dark and heady radiated from Kylo now.  Rey blinked over at him once, twice, realizing that she must have been too earnestly ruffled, her emotions left too unguarded.  Rain or no rain, force-reflection or no force-reflection, missing-in-action Supreme Leader Ren would hardly relish any mention of the Resistance at the moment. 

            “Pining for your beloved traitor, are you?”  Kylo’s intense gaze had devolved back into hostility.  “Is FN-2187 a fan of this stew?”

            Rey's brows scrunched together.  She may have been temporarily distracted, but she’d be _damned_ if she was going to let Kylo insult her dearest friend in her newly-scavenged home.  “For the last time,” she said, loudly, “and not that it matters as far as you’re concerned, but Finn is _not_ my ‘beloved.’  At least, not like you’re implying.  He happens to love other people.  I love him as a friend, because we helped each other.  We will _always_ help each other.  That’s what _friends_ do.”  The thrust of her chin was firm, fuming.  “And you would know that,” she leveled at him, “if you had strength enough to make any.”

            Kylo’s frown seemed to reach new depths of intensity, but he did at least appear to be taken aback by some of this information.  “Traitors aren’t likely to make the best ‘friends,’” he retorted, still studying her.  “They help no one but themselves.”

            “ _You_ only seem to help yourself,” Rey replied.  “Does that make you a traitor?”

            “I’ve helped _you!_ ” Kylo bellowed, rather suddenly.  “More than once.  I’m beginning to think it was a mistake.”

            “By the _stars_ , Ben,” Rey bellowed back at him, not caring how fiercely her voice rang out to meet his in the small, fire-lit chamber, “I can’t be friends with you if you keep this up!”

            “‘Friends with me?’” he repeated, quite low.  By the reach of her force-feelings, Rey sensed that he was puzzled … withholding … and furious, as usual, that she was probing so easily into him.  “You want to be _friends_ with me?” Kylo ground out, narrowing his eyes at her.

            She stared back at him, puzzling openly on her own.  Did he _still_ not comprehend what a friend was meant to be?  “I was once, wasn’t I?” 

            Kylo’s eyes burned. 

            She looked away. 

            “Don’t,” he protested, all too swiftly.  His voice was so impossibly quiet, so incredibly dangerous.  “Rey.  Look at me.  Stop turning away.”  His eyes kept burning.

            “ _Why?_ ” she demanded.  Her face tilted downward, scrutinizing the floor.  She felt rebellious, even mildly furious, down to her very toes.  “I won’t take orders from _you_.  Why do you keep trying to give them?” 

            Did Kylo not comprehend the word “please,” either?  _Ben_ knew the importance of that word, once, more than a year ago.  He never said “please” any more.  It had failed to work when she’d left him, and he seemed too shamed by that fact to use it again.  Too shamed, too enraged.  And … too baffled.  Too confused.  Something Kylo didn’t understand permeated him, at times blocking out all else.  Rey sensed that now.

            He fixed her with a stare.  “I want you to admit it.”   Blast him.  Despite the ache in his body, the ache in his mind, he wasn’t going to be deterred.  “You can admit it, Rey.  I already know.  Look at me, and admit it.”

            Her gaze remained vigilantly trained elsewhere, the shadows of her temper threatening to spark into flame.  “You do enough looking of your own,” she flung at him defiantly.  “Sod it, I don’t know what you _want_ when you look at me like that.”

            “Don’t you?” Kylo asked, quietly.  Slowly.  So horribly slowly.  **_Admit it.  Free yourself._ **

**_Free me._ **

            “No,” Rey replied defiantly, chin lifting.  Her eyes refused to meet his until she was sure they could be level as a smooth, inscrutable starship.  Only then did she look.  Only then did she glare.  _I’m not afraid of you.  Leave me out of it._

_Free YOURSELF._

            He exhaled.  “Why are you always pretending not to feel it?”   He regarded her for a long, searching moment.  “Why can’t you admit that you want me?” he asked, finally.

            Their cloaks continued the repetitive drip onto the floor.  The stew simmered away.  On the roof and outside the crack of the door, the rain poured down, unceasingly.


	13. Riptide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What must I do to keep you — to keep you attached to me?” His eyes fixed on her now, again, beneath the saturated wildness of his hair. “What will make you stop fighting me?”

            “I don’t want you,” Rey said.  Her look was large and bright.

            “You can’t lie, not to me."  Kylo gingerly rose to his feet.  He stood across from her somewhat formally, the old builder's table between them.  "I know your mind."

            “I know yours,” Rey replied, as if to divert the subject.

            Kylo's chin lowered.  He gave her one nod, but he was not to be diverted.  “You _do_ want me.  You wanted me when I took off my mask for you, and you wanted me when you took my hand.  You wanted me even more when you _didn’t_ take my hand.  You want me now.”

            “Enough,” Rey whispered.  Her eyes felt damp.  She couldn’t look at him any longer; the heat in his gaze would surely turn the incomprehensible mist in her eyes into steam.

            “Is it that unpleasant?”  Oh gods, he asked it so quietly.  It almost sounded gentle, as if any part of the Supreme Leader could ever be described as gentle.  Rey _really_ couldn’t look at him now.  She knew this particular question came not from Kylo Ren, but from a part of him far deeper, far more imperative to the Resistance’s survival, far more tangled up between the light and the dark — it came from Ben Solo.  “Is it unpleasant, to want me?”

            “If I did,” she said, “it would be.”

            He pressed the knuckles of one gloved fist against the table.  “Why?”

            She took a breath.  “Because this moon is not the galaxy, Ben.  We’re not the only two people in existence.  There’s so much pain out there, so much of it caused _by you_ , by the First Order — “

            “Rey.”  He chuffed, but it seemed that he truly wouldn’t be deterred, not now that he’d finally gotten here, gotten going.  The firelight made a play of shadow and light across his scarred features.  He didn’t understand.  He couldn’t understand.

            “How many people would you say you’ve killed?” Rey asked him again, just as she had in the hot springs all those many months ago.  She remembered him involuntarily suggesting that he’d spared three lives, not just hers — but Rey knew, even without the pulling hum of the force in her mind, that Kylo wouldn’t explain himself now.

            “ _Rey._ ”  He _refused_ to understand.

            “How _many?_ ” she suddenly shouted, slamming the ladle against the mantle with a reflective viciousness that seemed hardly her own.  “Give me a rough estimate!” 

            “You know the extent.  You know what the dark side is capable of, with someone like me.  Or with someone like you,” he couldn’t help but add, a kind of bitter, craving timbre stitching up the lowest corners of his voice. 

            Through her very teeth, Rey inhaled badly-needed air.  “ _You don’t know me at all, Kylo Ren!_ ”

            There was something strange again in his look, something all too quickly hidden as Kylo regarded Rey’s Sith-like fit of fervor.  She’d finally called him by the monster’s name.  He had been ordering her to do _that_ for over a year — only now, Kylo didn’t answer her.  Now, as Rey stood furiously in front of the fire, across the same room from the man who knew the confines of her brain more than anyone else — the man whose brain _she_ knew more than anyone else — wrecked together on the same lonely moon, Rey distinctly felt his sense of **_terror._**   

            Could it actually be true?  Did something echo deep within him, a kind of pleading?  Did something beg her to keep that beautiful, deadly light inside of her well-and-truly away? 

**_Heat._ **

**_Attachment._ **

**_Terror._ **

            “Damn it, I’ve told you — I’ve asked you to keep _out_ ,” Kylo snarled.  He struggled to control the riptide dragging him back to sea this time, however, and thus the snarl came out more like a hissing whisper.  Yet whether it was the wound or the heat, the moment or the mystification, his control still slipped.  His hand twitched in the force, and a large, old-fashioned plating-cog flew off the table.  It banged into the hut wall, knocking down one of Rey’s unknown mechanical projects-in-progress as it went. 

            The pile of wires and pinions clattered onto the wet floor.  One fine-toothed gear rattled around and around like a youngling’s top, revolving loudly for several overwrought moments.  Kylo’s brows furrowed as he stared down at it.  The gear spun faster and faster, on and on, until it shuddered flat to the floor in a dead, silent stop.

            Rey hadn’t moved.  “You see,” she calmed herself, breathing slowly, in and out.   “This won’t work.  This can’t work.  I don’t want you.  I can’t want you.”

            Kylo’s head bent even further downward, and both his arms hung at his sides.  Did he slump?  His injury was still tearing into and making him weak again, wasn’t it?  Was he going to clench his fists, rant and rave and rage?  “We may not be the only two people in the galaxy, Rey, but there are only two people here, now.”  A beat.  His damp hair slanted over his eyes as he spoke.  He swallowed.  “And you’re … everything.  You’re everything to me.”

            “Ben.”  Rey’s lips parted, suddenly too shaken to hold on to her newly-meditative calm.  Her hand constricted reflexively around the ladle.  Why did he change his horrible old words now?  _Had_ he learned to be cunning, after being rejected?  Had Kylo, at some point, learned to scheme?  

            “This attachment is all I have ever wanted,” he went on, at long last, the words spilling out like those of a haunted, dreaming, much-younger man, forever drowning away inside of him.

            “ _Kylo_.”  Rey stepped backward, like she did the first time she’d ever seen this mad shadow that still haunted and heated her.  She didn’t even have a blaster this time.  No, she thought, instead, she had something — she _was_ something — possibly more powerful and fearsome than Ben Solo had ever dreamed.  Rey felt the color rushing into her cheeks again.

            “What must I do to keep you — to keep you attached to me?”  His eyes fixed on her now, again, beneath the saturated wildness of his hair.  “What will make you stop fighting me?” 

            Rey blinked, biting back her knee-jerk responses: people couldn’t be kept!  She wasn’t for keeping!  She knew, too, by the light that formed the very hull of her, she could _never_ stop being drawn to fight the dark side that lingered in him.  Never truly.  It simply wasn’t in her nature.  But oh gods, no, she _couldn’t_ tell him these things.

            Everyone in the Resistance was counting on her. 

            She took a breath.  “You’ve got to _earn it_ ,” Rey hurled at him instead, the words seemingly tearing themselves from the depths of her. 

            There.  She’d finally set the idea out there for him to absorb.

            For a moment, for no time at all, for seemingly forever, they stared at each other. 

            He took a step toward her.

            Rey inhaled so fast that she almost choked.  “Don’t you dare try to steal a kiss from me, Ben Solo,” she seethed out at him ferociously, turning her face to the hut’s well-preserved wall, “or I’ll end you where you stand.”  A clear picture of her lashing out at his mad, dark head with her ladle colored the force between them.  The heart in Rey’s chest fluttered away like a frightened bird, once again. 

_Gods_ , how she hated that he must be able to feel that.

            For a long, aching moment, Kylo didn’t move. 

            And then, at last, he scowled.  “I don’t want to steal anything.  _You’re_ the scavenger here,” he mumbled — no, he snarled.  He seemed his old self again, regarding her imperiously, expressionlessly.  He even grimaced as a renewed volley of pain rushed back into his wounds.

            “Sit down,” Rey spat.  “Give me your cloak so it can dry out.  Eat this stew.”

            “Fine,” Kylo spat back, sitting down, throwing off his sodden cloak and force-hovering it over to her.  He curtly accepted a stew-filled bowl.  It wasn’t much of a bowl, really; it looked like another old round helmet.  His mouth turned down at a slightly-disgusted corner upon recognizing its age, but he wasn’t about to be cowed by anything of _hers_.  He raised the “bowl” to his lips and drank.  If anyone could eat in a storm of wrath, it was Kylo Ren.

            For her part, Rey force-floated Kylo’s dripping black cloak to drape over an ancient screen next to the fire.  She didn’t even condescend to touch it.  Then, manually, without aid of the force, she peeled her own light cloak back from the clasp and wrested it from her damp shoulders with a yank of insubordinate, I- _dare_ -you-to-say-anything-about-how-disheveled-I-must-be, because-you-don’t-look-so-terrific-either motion. 

            Kylo only chewed on a piece of stewed root.  He said nothing. 

            Rey moved his cloak aside with a terse force-shove and flung hers over the drying-screen beside it.  Then she sat crisply in the second chair, holding her own soup “bowl.”  Her expression made a wrathful mirror-image of Kylo’s as she glared warily across from him.  “When you’re done eating, you’re sleeping out here to get warm.  You won’t be sleeping anywhere near me.  And I am _locking_ the bedchamber.”

            He exhaled sharply.  “I wouldn’t think of disturbing you.”

            “Good,” she said, raising the helmet-bowl to block his blasted face from her view, draining the stew to its dregs.

            “Great,” he replied, brusquely, although when her fierce gaze was hidden behind the helmet-bowl, his dark, soundless eyes traced over the wet, clinging outlines of her clothes. 

            After the “bowls” were cleared away — Kylo did that, much to Rey’s consternation — they sat before the fire for a few silent moments in their damp clothes, glowering into the flames with what seemed to be more than a fair amount of mutual exasperation, if not outright loathing.  When Rey felt her thinner garments were sufficiently dry, she got up wordlessly and went through the doorway to the left of the fireplace. 

            And when she engaged the door-lock into place behind her, abandoning him for the night, it was because they both understood that only part of Kylo’s appetite had been satiated.

**_Earn it, she said._ **

            Kylo snorted dismissively and touched a hand to his bandaged side.  If he could only stop concentrating on closing this damn thing, then he could _truly_ see what Rey was thinking, even inside that locked chamber.  Then, he could convince her to stop lying about her feelings for him … and then that might turn her, finally ... and then … he winced uncomfortably.  In Kylo’s current state, he could hardly indulge the usual confusing surge of thrills that rose covertly within him at such thoughts.  **_Focus._** His eyes ran over the scavenged room again in the firelight, glaring around at all the evidence of Rey’s defiant, ingenious thieving.

            No.  She was _not_ ingenious.  She was only defiant.  Disobedient.  Wild.  A lightsaber-bandit. 

            Nothing else. 

            She never listened.  She was still too afraid to admit the truth, even when they were alone.  Hell, they couldn’t possibly _be_ more alone here, and it was _all her fault_.  The First Order could be crumbling to the ground under some foolish, stuck-up, temporary leadership, as he, Kylo Ren, sat here wounded, and Rey would be _glad_. 

            She’d _never_ let him keep her.

            He reflexively made himself livid, temporarily soldering up his lesions with the darkness inside of him. 

            Then his gaze caught something he hadn’t noticed before.  A single pillow, perched atop a couple of patched-over blankets, was stuffed into an ill-lit corner of the hut.  Rey must have scavenged it from her shuttle.  But this bedding was piled out _here_ , in the main room, not in the bedchamber.  This particular pile consisted of _extra_ bedding.  Kylo narrowed his eyes.  Had Rey _planned_ for him to sleep out here, and not in another builder’s hut as she’d claimed? 

            His lips flattened, then twitched.  Sod it all, as Rey sometimes said — he intended to find out what all this “earning” garbage meant.


	14. Ripples

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can heal myself,” he muttered.
> 
> “Not like the Jedi.” She studied his deepening frown, the twitching of his lips. “You heal like a Sith,” she said, “and that doesn’t work as well, not for the long term.” 
> 
> His eyebrows shot up again in consternation at her words, but he remained resolute. “You will not heal me with light, and that’s final.”

            The rain stopped by morning.  Clear skies returned again, with only the damp, lingering veil of humidity and the occasional rippling pool left behind as reminders of the previous night’s deluge.

            Rey couldn’t help feeling incredibly annoyed about the abrupt weather-change.  Kylo might just as well have stayed on the beach.  For one waking moment, Rey imagined Kylo brooding on the white sand forever, sulkily starving himself until only the parched, petulant bones of a dark skeleton remained.  Hell, she thought, crossly rubbing the sleep from her eyes, the Supreme Leader of gloom-incarnate would probably think that was an attractive way to go.

            She lingered in her small locked bedchamber for as long as possible, blearily regarding the late-morning sun as it filtered through the door's thin metal seams.  As usual, the light streaked over a peculiar collection of Rey’s scavenged containers — only here, in the bedchamber, the vessels were filled with something incongruously unproductive, something that lacked any mechanical function.  A riot of wildly-colorful flowers filled Rey’s bedchamber like a mad indoor meadow. 

            It may have been embarrassingly sentimental, but Rey couldn’t help being fascinated by the abundant flowers that grew on this lost little moon.  On Jakku, she’d only been able to find the tiniest, driest desert blooms — spinebarrels, or nightblossoms, which were nimble, prickly little things, as desperate to escape their surroundings as Rey herself.  Yet here, perhaps due to the terraform process, flowers unfurled practically anywhere Rey looked.  They grew gloriously wild, rife with the kind of tropical scents that the desert-rat within her had never even thought possible.  Rey stored her constantly-rotating meadow-collection in the bedchamber, she told herself, because she needed the greater space afforded by the main room just for her tinkering experiments.  Secretly, though — and rather like how Finn had once perceived the hot springs on Hoth-4 — Rey found it somewhat comforting to sleep, at last, in the midst of some kind of luxury.  She poked at a crimson bloom beside the bed now, its sun-washed, earthy-sweet scent drifting over her. 

            At the moment, unfortunately, it brought Rey little comfort.

            Flowers or no flowers, sleep had proved difficult with Kylo right outside the door all night long.  _Especially_ now that he finally had the gall to point out how much Rey’s force-reflected feelings clanged around inside of him.

            Rey heaved a sigh and squished her eyes shut.  She wasn’t going to think about that now.  She would think about that … never.  She was _never_ going to think about that.  Maybe Kylo would leave the hut of his own accord.  Maybe he’d prefer to go back to his sulking-beach, back to skeleton-land.  She knew the thought was mere fancy, however — Rey had sensed Kylo’s dark presence lurking right outside in the hut's main chamber for as long as she’d been awake.

_You’re being mildly ridiculous_ , Luke’s force-ghost voice informed her, inside her head.

_He’s your nephew_ , Rey sent back, running a hand over the furrow of her forehead. _Why don’t YOU talk to him?_

_We’ve been over this_ , Luke reminded her, far more patiently than the old man she’d met would ever have done. _He can’t hear me yet.  We’ve all discovered that it takes something bigger, something more balanced, to truly put the darkness in its place._

_But none of you know for sure, so I’m left to test your theory._ Rey sighed.

            She felt Luke’s starry presence smile within her senses.  _Come on, padawan.  It’s your theory, too._

            Rey squished her lips together at the sing-song tune of Luke’s come-on-padawan rhyme.  After he disappeared into the force, Luke became far lighter, far jokier; he had, or so Rey could only presume, a fatherly quality about him now.  _You probably shouldn’t call me padawan_ , she sent him. _It’s not accurate._ She hesitated.  _And I might not live up to it._

_Don’t prolong our mistakes, Rey.  Don’t worry about using the proper names and protocols for everything._ The reflection of Luke’s smile deepened.  _That goes for both of you._

 

***

 

            When Rey finally emerged from the bedchamber, Kylo was sitting stiffly at the table, quietly staring at her.  He must have been staring at the door, too.

            Rey reflexively glanced behind her as she shut the bedchamber door with a definitive clank.  Well, he couldn’t have heard Luke’s force-ghost, so … Rey ran a hand over her face as if she had something on it.  No.  No, there was nothing.  “Must you?” she asked, her mouth turning down slightly at one corner.

            “Must I what?”  Kylo's wound-constrained senses seemed to be filtering through him more actively than usual, but Rey outright _refused_ to reach out and measure the dark, infuriating conclusions that he must be making about her in the morning.

            “Stare,” she answered.  “Must you stare?  Seems like your favorite hobby.”

            “Hobby?”  He tested the word, disdainfully.

            “Yes, an activity.  Something you do, something you’re interested … in.”  Rey turned quickly and went into the chamber on the other side of the fireplace, her cheeks coloring as she sealed the refresher door shut.  _Again with the blushing, and she’d only just gotten up!_ She muttered some choice profanities while she turned on the tiny, old-fashioned shower in one short burst, just to splash water on her face.  It had taken the better part of two days for her to repair the old pipes, but they still worked — most of the time. 

            Rey had learned the term “hobby” from Finn and Poe and Rose; they all had several, and Rey had discovered that she did too.  Everyone did, probably even that nerve-burner out there.  _Does he like anything harmless, or is it all lightsabers, interrogations, and glaring for him?_ Rey exhaled.  She was _not_ going to puzzle out what Kylo was interested in right now. 

            Certainly not after last night. 

            She had neither time nor nerve right now to take a complete shower.  No matter; the rain had washed everything plenty clean, including her.  She made use of her shuttle-scavenged hairbrush and toothbrush-kit, then ran a hand over her slept-in clothes, tugging them into some semblance of order.  Then, with a resigned sigh, she stepped back into the main chamber.

            Kylo hadn’t moved.  He _was_ , however, looking pointedly up at the ceiling.

            Was he … trying?  Rey’s brows knit.  She moved to grab a water gourd-canteen and a handful of purple berries, noticing along the way that Kylo had folded his rumpled bedding-pile back into the corner.  She noticed, too, that he’d poked at the fire, and he seemed to have taken a walk at some point, or so a muddy bootprint on the stoop indicated.  A mental picture of Kylo taking stock of the other huts in the meadow, perhaps searching fruitlessly for lightsabers and subspace transceivers, filled Rey’s assumptions — the very idea infuriated her so much that she decided against pressing through the force to test if she was correct.  “Did you eat?” she asked, instead.  She popped a berry into her mouth, letting its outlandish sweetness push away her uneasy agitation for a moment.  Small talk.  Casual talk.  Careful talk.

            “Yes, I had some of those seeds,” Kylo asserted.  His eyes flickered down from the ceiling to regard her once more.

            "All right.”  Rey uncorked her water-gourd and took a sip.  They both felt more mutually-walled this morning, and the very last thing she wanted was to discuss their bewildering, churning stalemate last night.  For a moment, Rey let the fancy of mutual silence fill her — maybe they’d never talk about it again, and eventually _two_ skeletons would grace the moon, forever, in semi-blissful, never-talking-about-it, boney silence.

            “Are we going to talk about last night?” Kylo asked.

            Mid-drink, Rey almost choked.  “ _No_ ,” she spluttered out, coughing.  She sensed a wave of alarmed displeasure wash over him, and the realization that she could _still_ sense Kylo’s injury-weakened feelings, despite his force-wall, made her start spluttering again. 

            His gloved hand contracted and then retracted.  He was, she sensed, considering whether or not she required his assistance to help her breathe.

            Rey sat up ramrod-straight, aghast at the mere _thought_ of Kylo interfering with her windpipe in any way, helping or not.  “You need your bandages changed, right?” she asked in a rush, clearing her throat.  “You need that.  I’ll do that.”

            It was Kylo’s turn to look aghast.  On his face, though, the expression was one of fast-blinking, staring, lips-slightly-parted suspicion.  “I most certainly do not.”

            “Don’t be ridiculous.  I’ve had to do it before,” she said.

            “Yes," he replied, curtly enough to make her take immediate notice.  "You did.  While I was unconscious.” 

            Rey didn’t see where Kylo was going with his over-enunciated consonants this time.  “You were severely wounded, Ben.  You still are.  I can sense it.”

            “You _touched_ me,” he said.  Every word was lower, more emphasized, and more reproachful than the last.

            “To _bandage_ you,” Rey extended the statement for him, firmly.  She set her drinking-gourd onto the table and rested both of her hands on her knees, mirroring his seriousness.  “I had to.  You blacked out.”  She paused.  “Healing isn’t exactly intimate, you know.”

            His brow darkened.  “It _is_.”

            “No, it’s detached,” Rey argued, her exasperation rising.  “Or at least, it often has to be.  Any medical droid would tell you so.”

            “That’s not the same.”  The barely-restrained storm in Kylo’s look grew even darker.  “You healed me with the force.”

_Oh._   “Well, I haven’t learned much about that,” Rey admitted lightly, carefully.  When had he figured that out?

            Kylo leaned forward, across the table.  His eyes were searing.  “You pressed the light through my skin.  Into my bones, into my blood.  With your bare hands.”

            “Oh,” Rey whispered.  She understood now, because his reproving words sent her a picture of the scenario in reverse, the images misting over the force for her.  She saw what would happen if Kylo pressed his dark rage over _her_ , healing her through the darkness ... one long, bare hand floating over her skin ... fury, hatred, and a deep, unyielding intensity unfolding, like a cape, around the very core of her ... gods, it would cause the dark side of the force to shadow her more strongly than it already did. 

            What side of the force shadowed Kylo now?  How long had Ben been feeling her light, like a dawning headache, tearing into the background of his mind?

            A very definite pink wound its way over Rey’s features.  If the situation had indeed been reversed like that, she might have killed him.  Right?  She would have just plain snuffed him out for putting darkness into her, wouldn’t she?

            Kylo was looking at her, one corner of his jaw working.  Always studying her, always reading her. 

            Hobbies. 

            “I think you’re just going to have to deal with it, Ben,” Rey stated suddenly, quietly.  Cautiously.  “The light heals better.”

            Both of Kylo’s eyebrows shot up.  “Oh?” he asked, the question both suspicious and dangerous.  “When did you study force-healing?”

            Sod it, did the dark side have to be jealous of _everything?_ In any case, Rey was ready with a prepared answer.  “Your uncle Luke showed me, on Ahch-To.”

            “Ah.  How reassuring.”  Sarcasm practically dripped from Kylo now, waves upon waves, issues upon issues.  “Such an excellent teacher.  So understanding, so perceptive.  So successful.”

            Rey silently dug her nails into the palm of one hand, resisting a sudden, secret-ghost-defending urge to slap her murderous guest.  “Well,” she managed to say, only a _little_ through her teeth, “I’m the only healer you’ve got here.  And it’s an awfully small moon.”

**_It’s YOUR fault we’re trapped on this damned moon in the first place,_** Kylo pushed over to her heatedly, through the force.  He didn’t seem to want to say it aloud, almost as if he was restraining himself from doing so, for some reason.

            They glared at each other for a few moments.  Rey didn’t give him an inch.  She could sense, now, that Kylo was always vexed by that — by her boldness, by her unrelenting impertinence — and yet he was also strangely _pleased_ by these behaviors too, somehow.  Rey frowned, her senses starting to bewilder her again.  Oddly, Kylo seemed to be examining why these curious feelings existed within him at all, weighing out the scope of whatever Rey had meant, last night, by telling him he’d have to “earn” an attachment to her.  Rey blinked, completely and thoroughly taken aback, especially since it was Kylo who broke their stare.

            He looked down at the table between them.  “I can heal myself,” he muttered.

            “Not like the Jedi.”  She studied his deepening frown, the twitching of his lips.  “You heal like a Sith,” she said, “and that doesn’t work as well, not for the long term.” 

            His eyebrows shot up again in consternation at her words, but he remained resolute.  “You will not heal me with light, and that’s final.”

            “Fine,” she said.  “Then you won’t be able to sense as well as you’d like.”  While Kylo’s face darkened into its usual silent storm, Rey got up, rustled around, came back, and scooted a med-kit over to him.  “Fresh bandage?”

            He let out a frustrated growl.

            Rey waited.  “I won’t look, if that’s what worries you.”  She took a casual swig from her water-gourd.  Gods, she probably needed to dial it back a little, but something deep inside of her couldn’t help needling him.  It just seemed so _fair_.

            With another growling grumble, longer this time, Kylo got to his feet and stalked into the refresher with the med-kit, closing the door with as much of a bang as the old metal could provide.

            Rey took the opportunity to rest, for a moment, by sinking forward to lay her forehead against the ancient builder’s table.  It felt cool and sturdy against her skin.  Kylo might be in there awhile; maybe she could escape the baffling wilderness of him for a few hours.  She sat up and started gathering items into her knapsack.  “I need to — uh — check on my freshwater source after that rainstorm,” she called out.

            “Why?” Kylo called back blankly, his voice muffled from behind the door.

            “To assess any damage, and make sure it’s not fouled.  Storms have a way of flushing out all kinds of debris.”  Rey stuffed a couple of empty gourd-canteens into her knapsack.

            “Where do you get the fresh water?” he asked, after a beat.

_He wanted to know that — now?_ “Oh,” Rey tossed off airily, donning her now-thoroughly-dry cloak, “there’s a creek not far from here.  I’ll only be a short walk away.”

            “You will take me with you."  Even muffled, his voice sounded firm and final.

            So much for temporary distance!  “You don’t really need to come along,” Rey called, finding it difficult to restrain her irritation at the not-at-all-veiled command in Kylo’s tone.  “I’ve got lots of full canteens here already, plus what comes from that old patched refresher.”

            “I need to know where the fresh water is, don’t I?  I do.  You think I'm foolish for not asking before.”  Kylo emerged from the refresher rather suddenly, shirtless.  He was still dressed otherwise, but he carried his tunic resolutely at his side.

            Rey's breath hitched in dismay, her eyes rolling ceiling-ward.  “ _Ben_ ,” she huffed, “we are _not_ going to talk about last night!”

            There was a very definite pause.  “Does this bandage meet with your prized Jedi approval?” he asked pointedly, clearly annoyed that he had to remind her why he went into the refresher in the first place.  His gaze remained intense, however, as it studied her again.

            “It seems fine,” Rey replied, reddening, giving the dressing a cursory glance and nod.  It _was_ a better bandaging-job than he’d done before; Kylo had clearly followed her previous examples.  Pain still wove a background of dark, unsteadying fire throughout his body, however, no matter how strapping he looked on the outside.  “You know it won’t work properly without Jedi healing,” Rey couldn’t help but add, her eyes on the wall, the floor, the table, the door.  Any non-Kylo surface would do.

            Kylo pulled his tunic back over his head slowly, gingerly avoiding the new bandages, then fastened his own newly-dry cloak over it.  He didn’t answer.

            Rey rolled her eyes again as she headed for the door, hearing him fall into step behind her.  _If this is what it means to live closely with a man, then it’s no great loss to have lived so long alone._

            She would just have to keep telling herself that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your sweet, wonderful comments and kudos! They have seriously given me such lovely welcome-back-to-writing vibes. You're all so kind, and I'm so overwhelmed — in a good way — and so, so happy that this fic has potentially lifted a few spirits out there in the great internet wilderness. :D 
> 
> In other news, I'm nearing the end of my daily-update experiment. There should be one more daily-frenzy chapter tomorrow, and then it's off to traditional, old-timey, once-a-week update-land I go. *dusts off yon horse, prepares ye olde bugle* :p


	15. Reeds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His embarrassment changed into indignation. “Of course I’ve kissed someone before!” he thundered.
> 
> _Oh._
> 
> “Oh,” Rey repeated the strangeness of her own force-feeling aloud. She paused. “But was it a long time ago, or do you mean, say, you kissed your mother on the forehead?”

            Rey picked her way through the jungle.  Like a shadow, Kylo followed her. 

            Felled leaves and pooled rainwater cluttered their route through the trees.  The unmistakable sound of a burbling creek grew ever-more audible the further they went through the sun-streaked undergrowth.

            Except for the rushing water and the occasional croak of small creatures, it was quiet.  Too quiet.  Ordinarily, Rey wouldn't care, but this morning, the shadow following her was not her own.  This morning, everything about Kylo felt _annoying_ , from the way his cape whispered over the damp earth to the way his step halted slightly in all-too-stubborn pain.  _This_ morning, the quiet would not do.  “What's this moon called?” Rey finally asked, facing down the source of her annoyance.

            Kylo seemed lost in thought, as though he were giving the path through the jungle a silent evaluation.  “It was terraformed by the old Empire.  Lost to war and time, I expect.” 

            “I _know_ it’s been terraformed,” Rey replied, rolling her eyes over the fact that Kylo had not listened to her actual question.  She side-eyed a patch of flowers as she passed by.  “I sensed that too.  It feels … unnatural, somehow.” 

            An unexpected streak of pleasure ran through him, reflecting back over the force to her.  It baffled Rey for a moment before she remembered, once again, that Kylo didn’t ever sense matters _along with_ anyone else.  Her jaw setting slightly, Rey redirected the subject.  “I’d like to know its name.  Doesn’t the First Order keep record of pretty much every planet in the galaxy?”

            Kylo drew himself up, clasping both hands behind his back.  “No one can map the entirety of Wild Space.  Not even the Jedi, at their so-called peak, could do that.  And the defective Republic hardly has the resources that we do.  We’ve only recently begun to tame the Unknown Regions — ”

            “Gods, never _mind._ ”  Rey's brows scrunched together as she turned away, stepping widely around a large puddle of rainwater as she went.  The subject of taming, especially world-taming, was the very _last_ thing about which she was willing to make small talk, particularly when Kylo put on that blasted Supreme Leader, heir-to-a-murderous-empire act.  _But that’s who he is_ , she reminded herself.  _He’s here, of a sort, but his mind is still there._   The thought made Rey feel indescribably cold.  Her step felt heavier, somehow, accosting her own lithe progress over the damp, frond-strewn jungle floor.

            She heard Kylo following silently, one small splash indicating that he’d stepped directly into the rain-puddle she’d avoided — he was either too distracted, or else he simply didn't care.  Their mutual force-blocks were still in place, mostly.  Still on.  Still up.  Still avoiding.

            A creek came into view.  “Almost there,” Rey turned to announce, with a casualness she did not feel.

            Kylo’s eyes focused on the still-visible crease between her brows.  “You don’t want to talk about the First Order,” he stated, as if slowly absorbing the idea.  “Not even to pry information out of me?”

            She looked away.  “That’s right.  I don’t.”

            He studied her.  “Do you want to talk about the Resistance, and where they’re located?”

            “ _Tch_.”  Rey didn’t even deign to articulate a response.  His question had the tenor of a dark joke, perhaps, but nothing could ever be funny when it came to Kylo’s sinister designs for the Resistance.  Rey turned on her customary heel and started walking further into the jungle now, following the rain-swollen creek.

            For a moment Kylo radiated mild surprise that the creek itself wasn’t their destination.  He followed Rey all the same, though, ever the fixated phantom.  “How about your new control over the force?  Who’s your teacher now?”

            Stiffening almost imperceptibly, Rey shot a look back at him.  Kylo’s attempts at conversation were sounding uncomfortably scheme-prone, as if he meant to coax her into something.  Into what, she didn’t know.  “Who’s _your_ teacher?” she asked, pointedly.

            “I have surpassed mine.”  His voice was low.  Blank. 

            Proud. 

            “You’re _such_ a Sith,” Rey breathed, frowning openly now.

            A slight twitch spread from his jaw to his lips, but he continued studying her.  “I am not.  We’ve been over this.”

            “Seems like it.”  Exhaling, Rey increased her pace a little, putting more space between them.  Sod it, she shouldn’t have let him come along with her.  Kylo didn’t need to know where her source of freshwater was.  He wasn’t going back to the beach.  He was going to be, at best, her neighbor, and at worst, her cellmate.

            The sound of rushing water grew louder as she hurried along.  A break in the massively-tall trees lay ahead.

            Despite his mental wound-maintenance, Kylo increased his pace, closing the gap Rey had put between them with his much-longer stride.  “Where have you gotten all of this information about the Sith?” he asked her, a mixture of annoyance and intrigue in his voice.  “The Sith were flawed, it’s true.  But Skywalker never really understood them, or the dark side they served.”

            “And I suppose _Snoke_ understood them?” Rey asked, incredulously.  “Much good it did him.”  Oddly, it was her, now, who drew herself up, who lost herself in thought.  “I _certainly_ don’t see much wisdom in their blasted Rule of Two.  One master to focus the darkness, one apprentice to crave it, and only the most powerful survives?  Why even _have_ an apprentice, then?  You can drive yourself mad on dark power all you like, but it won’t matter if your apprentice … uh, murders you.”  Rey trailed off, her cheeks pinking.  Gods, she was _babbling_.  She turned, cloak whirling, and hurried quite fast toward the break in the trees, not even _daring_ to look back at Kylo and gauge his expression now. 

 _I don’t CARE what he thinks_ , Rey tossed off furiously, to herself _._ She certainly wasn’t going to tell Kylo about the ancient Jedi texts.  It was just … well, there was no one else left, physically-speaking anyway, to talk to about her studies, her meditations, her observations, like this.  Rey stepped into the clearing and blinked around, willing her discomfort away. 

            High above her, several waterfalls cascaded down from the top of a moss-lined cliff.  Their misty spray showered into a deep freshwater pool, which then flowed out into the creek.  It was one of the prettiest vistas that the terraformed moon had to offer, but Rey hardly saw it that way at this particular moment.  She could sense that Kylo had reached the break in the trees, and that he was staring silently. 

            Not at the waterfalls, of course. 

            Rey squinted upward, avoiding the track of Kylo’s incessant gaze.  Last night’s rainstorm had washed a smattering of debris and felled tree fronds into the pool, but the spring that fed the very top of the falls appeared undamaged.  The water plunged ever-onward, unbothered by confusion, seclusion, _or_ dark, impossible men. 

            Distractedly, Rey took hold of one large tree branch floating at the edge of the pool and pulled, wresting it out onto the grassy, reed-lined bank.  As she took hold of another, a black gloved hand settled at the far end of the branch.  “At least the Sith knew how to acquire real power,” Kylo said simply, as if Rey hadn’t run off ahead of him, as if they’d simply continued discussing Sith-history the entire time.

            As if he wanted to air his thoughts, too.  With somebody.  With anybody. 

            With her.

            Rey blinked over at him, more in disbelief that Kylo wanted to keep talking than over the fact he was attempting to help her.  “You’re wounded.  Don’t push it.”

            He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise ignored her demand.  “Real power will always win.”  **_Talk.  Don’t be afraid; I know you want to.  Talk to me._**

            Rey glared at his force-flown presumptuousness.  _I’m not afraid of YOU._

            He waited.

            She exhaled, her irritation rising.  “The Sith didn’t win, Ben.  That ‘real power’ drove them to extinction.  Their cruel way of accessing the force left them fast-burning, fast-dying.  They didn't care who they hurt.”  Rey paused, realizing that her thoughts sounded rather like a cautionary lecture.  “What kind of life is that?”

            “A life of passion,” Kylo retorted.  His eyes were flickering. “The _Jedi_ never felt anything, Rey.  They closed themselves off.  They never fully lived.  They refused that passion, that power.”  He paused for a moment, regarding her.  “Jedi are celibate, you know.”

            For a long moment, the sound of the waterfalls blotted out thought.

            “Is that why you left?” Rey fired back suddenly, quietly.  If Kylo had been hoping to shake her up a little with this debate, he suddenly found her far too controlled — too Jedi-like, ironically, at least for the moment.  After all, Rey knew that Kylo hadn’t just _left_ the Jedi order; he and the Knights of Ren had _murdered_ a bunch of them, at his old Sith-leaning master’s command.

            “I left because they were hypocrites,” Kylo returned, his jaw working as he studied her closely.  The twisted memory of a murderous-faced Luke standing over him — betraying him, rejecting him — shimmered into Rey’s mind over the force.  “They were hypocrites,” Kylo went on, “who should have given up a long time ago.”  **_Hypocrites who  believed it was wrong to feel, wrong to be attached … they were both wrong, Rey, the Jedi and the Sith …_**

            “Were the Sith celibate?” Rey asked suddenly, shifting slightly on the grassy bank.  This conversation had certainly not gone anywhere that she cared to go.

            Kylo regarded her more closely.  “Not always.”

            “Are _you_ celibate?”  Gods, this conversation had _definitely_ not gone anywhere Rey cared to go.

            He blinked, and then his entire face curled down into a scowl, all too aware that she was trying to divert him, to distract him.  “Rey — "

            “You know, I heard that your uncle Luke had a wife,” she interrupted, her cheeks feeling blastedly hot.  “Is that what you mean by the Jedi being hypocrites?”

            “ _What?_ ”  It was Kylo’s turn to freeze. 

            Innocently, casually — her heart hammering nonetheless — Rey blinked back at him.  “Just some old story.  A myth, probably.  I never asked him about it.”

            Kylo seemed too stunned to respond, or at least too goaded by Rey’s persistent deflections.  _Good_ , she thought.  He seemed to be walling her out from their connection in the force quite easily this morning, so Rey could only guess as to the meaning behind the expressionless mask of his face now ... which was exactly where she _didn’t_ want to look.  Hastily, instead, Rey turned her attention to her knapsack, rummaging around for the empty gourd-canteens she’d brought along.  She headed in the direction of the waterfalls, once again putting a very necessary distance between her brooding debate-opponent and herself.

            Stepping-stones of varying sizes lay partially-submerged across the reflective waterfall-pool.  Rey crossed from one to another, taking care not to slip on their rain-soaked surfaces.  Clambering onto a wide, flat rock beside the slimmest of the falls, she braced one hand against the moss-covered cliff as she filled and then re-stowed each canteen.  After awhile, the rush of falling water drowned out the puzzling haze in Rey’s mind, and the light spray of the falls cooled her skin.  She couldn’t seem to get the heat to leave her cheeks, however.Bothered, bewildered, she brushed the mist from her forehead with the back of one wrapped arm. 

            When she turned back to the bank, Kylo was standing at its edge, just above the reeds.  His hands were at his sides.

            “What?” Rey asked.  The waterfalls misted behind her, contouring her stance in white.

            His gloved fingers twitched.

            “ _What?_ ” she asked again, crossly.

            He extended a hand to her, out across the pool.

            Instantly, the force ignited the usual memory-visions within her.  She saw Ben, or Kylo, taking her hand in their bond before Luke put a stop to their madness … asking her to join him, pleading, using the same hand to do so … and then potentially lost forever, when she refused.  Even now, so far beyond those crucial turning points in their lives, taking that very hand remained the most intimately-felt gesture of Rey’s life. 

            She could never make such a mistake again.  She couldn’t.  She wouldn’t.

            Kylo’s brows lowered, furrowed.  His face turned down for a moment, glowering at the grassy bank, before it shot back up, peering, staring — Rey’s fingers had grasped his.  Pulling lightly, more balanced with the aid of his hand, she stepped from the last stone onto the bank next to him.  For a moment, she steadied herself under the added weight of the filled canteens in her knapsack.  Then she let go of his hand, as one did.

            A muscle in his face twitched.  He grabbed her hand back, as one shouldn’t.  His gloved grip slid up, tightly encircling her wrist, as one _really_ shouldn’t.

            “Ben,” Rey bristled, her bare fingers flexing out a warning. 

            His gaze processed the fact that Rey didn’t pull away, not even in her mind.  She remained defiant, but other than those flexed fingers, she didn’t move.  She tested him.  She dared him.  Didn’t she?  Kylo leaned down, inches from her face, her lips.  He sensed part of her perceptions more easily now — Rey could feel the wound tearing through him, but she could also smell his skin, tinged with a mixture of leather and rainwater.  She didn't turn away.  And she was warm.  Her face.  Her wrist.  Somewhere below, too, much deeper, curling into the restless, mysterious center of her.  “You want me,” Kylo noted, his voice lower than practically ever before.

            " _Ben_."  Her face tilted up to stare at him, glare at him.  The light in her eyes suffused through him fiercely. 

            For some reason, perceiving Rey's reception of his own scent made Kylo concentrate more fully on the scent of _her._ Rey smelled like wildflowers.  It was the same curious, apparently-accidental scent that had drifted from her when she’d emerged from the bedchamber that morning, sinking into Kylo's senses like a puzzling fever.  She smelled of flowers, and moss, and green leaves, and the force reflected Kylo’s sense of it right back at her.

            He wanted to kiss her.  Gods, he wanted to run his lips over every single scented inch of her. 

            ” _Kylo_ ,” Rey said, furiously.  That was all she _had_ to say, because before she said anything else, as Kylo leaned down to kiss her, uninvited, sudden, and all too sharp, his nose — and even his teeth, somehow — bonked clumsily against hers.

            They both drew back with all possible speed, Kylo releasing his hold on her, Rey’s cheeks turning absolutely red.  For a long, horribly awkward moment, they each pressed their own individual palms against their own individual noses.  The waterfalls rushed on behind them, oblivious to the incredibly uncomfortable scene going on beside the debris-scattered pool.

            Kylo didn’t seem to know what an apology was, but he did cast his lashes downward, lost in a different kind of vast, dark pool — one of his own mortification.

            Rey knew she should probably change or deflect the subject, as usual, but her fury at Kylo’s invasiveness wouldn’t let her.  “Have you ever kissed anyone before?” she demanded, archly.  She was too provoked; he’d been too close, too presumptuous, too commanding.  Rey already knew that Kylo had never “claimed” anyone before, but had he never _kissed_ anyone, either?

            His embarrassment changed into indignation.  “Of course I’ve kissed someone before!” he thundered.

_Oh._

            “Oh,” Rey repeated the strangeness of her own force-feeling aloud.  She paused.  “But was it a long time ago, or do you mean, say, you kissed your mother on the forehead?”

            Kylo frowned down at her.  “It was a long time ago.”  He waited to see if that would be enough, to see if Rey would tilt her head back up at him in that testing, rousing way.

            It wasn’t.  She didn’t.  Instead, Rey crossed her arms warily over her chest.

            He let out an exasperated sigh.  “Do you really want to know?’

            She waited.

            Chuffing slightly, for a moment Kylo reached back into the dark, clouded void of his memory.  His frown didn’t dissipate.  “She was a servant girl, a couple years older than I.  She was,” and for a moment he searched for the proper, now-foreign word, “cute.”

            Rey’s mouth fell open.  It was utterly impossible to hide her astonishment at Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the Scar, using — or even knowing, or even lowering himself to _use_ — such a simple, straightforward, flyboy-like word.

            “She had brown eyes,” Kylo pointed out, his frown deepening at Rey’s open-mouthed reaction.  Rey could sense that the eye-color detail was meant as a helpful aside, for her, as if it explained something about _her_ , too, something she must surely already know, somehow. 

            Temporarily struck dumb by the confusing weight of all this madness, Rey sat with a loud _plump_ onto the grassy bank of the waterfall-pool.  She ran a hand over her face as if to shut her mouth manually, then concentrated on holding her thoughts back from the force.  Young Ben Solo and a servant girl, kissing!  It almost defied comprehension!  Rey felt the unbelievable urge to laugh, or at least to smile — something that Poe Dameron, of all people, would surely have done, only _he_ would have been so charming about it that practically no one would be offended — with a great effort, Rey managed to make sure that her lips merely twitched upward.  _Sod it, get a hold of yourself._ She cleared her throat.  “What happened to her?”

            Another long, irritated sigh escaped him.  Kylo looked down at her for a moment, and then oddly, gingerly, he sat too, arranging himself into something like a kneel.  A long silence ensued as he gathered more memories out of what Rey assumed to be a thick fog.  “My strength in the force frightened her," he said, impassively.  "It frightened everyone.  And I was ordered to stop bothering the servants, who weren’t to be kissed.  Too much of a ‘difference in power,’” he intoned.  There was the distinctly-recited echo of General Organa in Kylo’s quoted phrase. 

            It shocked Rey anew to hear the shade of something like the general’s tone coming from Kylo — but then, Leia _was_ his mother, after all.  (Privately, Rey memorized the phrase in question for perusal at a less-bewildering time: _too much of a difference in power_.  They didn’t have one of those, he and she, at least not when it came to the force.)  “So, you were told to stop bothering her because you were ... sort of a prince?” she asked, unable to restrain herself from summarizing.  “You couldn’t kiss peasants?”

            Kylo shifted.  “Something like that.”  His eyes roved toward the rushing waterfalls; it seemed to take a considerable struggle for him to remember so far back.  “But there was more to it.  She could have lost her place, her living, but practically nothing would have happened to me.  And,” he went on, “after my … after master … after Snoke called to me as a youngling, the people I was drawn to … “ he trailed off, pausing slightly before surging ahead again, “I could never be sure I didn’t in some way order them to do what I wanted.”

_Jedi mind-tricks.  Sith mind-tricks._

            Rey’s eyes were bright.  “So did you?  Stop bothering the servant girl, I mean?”

            “Of course I did,” Kylo said, insulted.  “I’m not a — “  He stiffened and broke off abruptly. **_Monster._ **

            Rey looked at him carefully, but he was merely glowering downward again. 

            Kylo swung the focus to her, almost accusingly.  “And you?  What about _you?_ ”

            Her look turned blank.  Hadn’t Kylo already seen the answer to that, inside her head?  Rey figured _that_ would have been one of the first things he’d examined in there, and she was surprised to learn it was not.  “Of course I have,” she said, echoing his earlier response somewhat.  Her tone lacked his thundering offendedness, however.

            Kylo had been holding back his force-floating jealousy for some time, but now it flared anew.  “FN-2187 — or — someone in the Resistance?” he inquired, managing to divert his tone a bit, in case Rey might accuse him of forgetting what she’d told him last night.

            Rey’s mouth completely flattened out.  “Finn is my _friend_.  We do not _kiss_.  Finn kisses other people.”  Did Kylo really not know?

            He gazed fixedly at the grass below him.  “Who have you kissed, then?”

            Gods, were they really having this conversation?  Aggravated, Rey felt, somehow, that they were both too old for it.  “I’ve _been_ kissed.  I don’t care for it, you might as well know."  Once more, all too fast, images and memories poured over the force between them.  An endless series of sandy bandits and stinking, sly traders roved Jakku ... most of them drunk and unsteady, pushing and shoving, never smelling very good ... one such bandit, one night, sampling scraps that didn't belong to him, decided that it would be a fine idea to sample Rey's lips, too, only he didn't ask _her_ about it … she'd fought him off, of course, and he'd certainly regretted it fairly quickly.  With some effort, her nose wrinkling, Rey flicked this particular vision back into the farthest reaches of her mind.  She glanced over at Kylo, wondering how much, if anything, he had seen.

            If a pair of eyes could ever be on fire and black as hell at the same time, that pair was Kylo’s.  “You shouldn’t have wrecked my ship,” he ground out finally, forcefully.  **_I have to get to Jakku.  One way or another.  To start the executions._**

            Rey gave him a withering look.  “My old fights aren’t _yours_.”  A beat.  “I knocked out most of his teeth, you know,” she spoke up, seemingly out of the blue, tilting her head to one side.  “They made quite a disgusting collection.”

            With a surprising abruptness, Kylo turned his face away from her.  Some kind of vein in his neck was pulsing.  Rey sensed approval, of her strength … blinding rage, toward drunkards on Jakku, and toward himself, too, for not exploring these particular memories inside of Rey’s head sooner … a thrill of dark hope, since surely only someone leaning toward darkness could bring herself to collect the teeth of vagabond scum … and … **_p_ _ **ity**._ **

            “Don’t you _dare_ pity me,” Rey snapped at him, a little too savagely.  “I could handle myself.  I _can_ handle myself.  I’m not some wilting desert flower.”

            Kylo rumbled, breathed.  It was almost a bitter laugh.  “I know.”

            “Then what was that?” she demanded.

            His shoulders squared a little.  “You ought to kiss someone for yourself,” he said quietly, although it was almost inaudible against the endless rush of the waterfalls.  “Someone right.”

            Rey squinted over at him.  All that building-up of talk, all that lowering of tension, offering her his hand across the pool, his attempted kiss — he’d been trying to _steal_ it, she understood now, and he was just _sodding_ lucky that she didn’t have her lightstaff on her — surely it all boiled down into Kylo’s attempts to coax her into ... into _what_ , exactly?  Did he want to claim her, still? 

            Yes, Rey concluded, self-protectively.  Self-preservingly.  That must be exactly what he was doing.  Her eyes narrowed even further.

            “You ought to kiss someone who calls you willingly,” Kylo went on, seeing none of her dreadful, walled-off analysis, failing to recognize that Rey’s look grew darker by the second.

            She stood up.  “That’s enough.”

            Kylo almost stood too, but — no, only his hands flexed, level against the ground.  “Someone you want,” he petitioned, finally.

            Well, that tore it. 

            “Someone like you?” Rey asked, flatly, wryly, staring down at the dark young man kneeling before her.  “Because you care so much about what I want?” 

            “I _know_ what you want,” he said.  “I’ve always known.  I just haven’t always been,” he paused, still searching for the correct descriptions, “ _free_ , to hear.”

            It was Rey’s turn to rumble out an incredulous laugh.  “You think I belong to you.  That I owe you.  That I can look past the darkness within you.  You said you'd claim me.”  Her gaze, burningly bright, bored into him.  “You might as well be a bandit, Ben.”

            He stood now, so fast he almost convulsed.  “ _That’s_ what you think of me?” he shuddered out, somewhere between a hiss and a whisper.

            She stepped back, further away from him.  “Prove me wrong.”

            Of course, he wouldn’t, Rey told herself.  He would stand there and go on about claiming, about epic battles and galaxy-ruling and unquestioning dominance until the day he died.  Typical Kylo.  Typical Supreme Leader Ren.  Now that Rey's uncertainties had switched on, they flooded her entirely, like a dark, unstoppable sand-storm radiating from her memories back on Jakku.  Sod it, maybe Ben Solo _had_ mind-tricked that servant girl into kissing him, all those many years ago.  Maybe she hadn’t really wanted to. 

            Maybe that’s what he was doing to her, Rey, _now_. 

            Kylo took a ragged breath.  She felt him quite literally forcing his eyes to meet hers; so many gray emotions simmered in his gaze that she couldn’t even begin to parse one feeling from the next.  She did register one, though.  It was new, and it confused her entirely: **_despair._**

            His lips clenched together for a moment. 

            Then, slowly, he dipped his head.  One inch, two inches.  She sensed it was an old, automatic gesture, so old that Kylo could barely remember its meaning even though the rest of the bow proceeded as one fluid motion from his waist.  Then he turned — albeit stiffly — and walked away, out of her sight, back along the route toward the builder’s huts, putting all the space between them that Rey had longed for earlier.

            Alone, she dropped back to her knees on the grass.  _Breathe_ , Rey ordered herself.  _Meditate.  Visualize knocked-out teeth and count them.  Anything._   For a long, gray moment she remained where she’d dropped, listening to the thrum of the falls, staring intently at the ground where Kylo’s kneeling, penitent handprints were still warm.

            She was hardly good at being a padawan.  She wasn’t entirely sure she could handle being somebody’s master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, this should have been posted yesterday, but time and tide and length and insomnia-vampires got the best of me. Updates should resume on Mondays, starting March 12. 
> 
> *toots ye olde traditional-weekly-update horn, feeds an apple to yon tapestry-style unicorn*
> 
> EDITED TO ADD: I'll be sporadically popping around [Tumblr](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com) for updates, questions, inspo, and intensely-silly prattle. Comments and kudos and questions — oh my — are always loved. You guys keep me thinking! :D


	16. Chaparral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You said I could kiss you,” he muttered, looming before her. “I’ll kiss you where I like. I’ll kiss you where it counts.”

            By the time Rey returned from the waterfall spring, Kylo had withdrawn.

            He didn’t return to the beach.  Instead, he holed up at the end of the meadow, in an unoccupied builder’s hut.  There he stayed.  Stonewalled.  Guarded.

            Rey remained in her own mechanized scavenger-dome, full of experiments and softly-lit purposes.  Self-preserved.  Vigilant.

            The days proved warm.  The nights remained cool.  The tree-fronds swayed, the jungle-creatures chirped, the waves crashed along the island rim.  Every so often, another rainstorm would deluge the tropical moon, only to pass away by morning light. 

            For awhile, the two subdued, circling inhabitants spoke only to exchange food, from Rey, and sometimes water or fuel for their fires, from either of them, depending on who sallied forth to fetch it from the jungle.  Once, with careful, purely-mechanical thoughts swirling in her head, Rey offered to patch the shower in Kylo’s hut, and although his eyes flickered as he nodded briefly, he barely reacted.  He wasn’t present when she crossed the meadow to perform said fixing, either, and he stayed away for the project’s duration, keeping to jungle-parts unknown.  _Fine by me_ , Rey thought, routinely.  She clattered around with the refresher-pipes over the next couple of days, absorbing Kylo’s newly-withdrawn surroundings in spite of herself.

            Kylo’s hut was the polar opposite of Rey’s.  Where hers was full of life, his was austere.  Save for the bedding he’d borrowed, his chambers looked so painfully sparse that they barely seemed lived-in.  Except for the old builder’s furniture and a smattering of Rey’s food-store scavenger-boxes, Kylo’s hut remained undecorated, uncluttered.  He _did_ have a small container taken from his broken ship, but a peeping Rey found nothing of consequence there — just a change of clothes, some sort of old-fashioned razor, and a standard toiletry-kit or two.  Rey wondered, idly, how Kylo managed to stay looking relatively clean, especially since his shower hadn’t worked until she’d offered to fix it.

            Well.  It _was_ fixed, now.

            As she finished, Rey could sense that Kylo had returned to the main chamber of his hut.  She emerged cautiously, her scavenged-tools in tow.  She felt distinctly unkempt, somehow, and she wiped her face with one of the asymmetrical folds of her tunic as she went. 

            Kylo poked at the fire, closer to her than he had been for some time.  Rey could now sense what Kylo clearly assumed were orders pressing up against the sides of his mind, as passengers might crowd the windows of a touring starship.  **_Stay.  Talk.  Get me out of here.  Let me try again.  Let me have you._**

            Rey almost stumbled as she shot back toward the front door of the hut, turning only as she reached the stoop.  “Shower’s fixed,” she said, curtly.

            “Yes,” he stated.  He resealed his force-wall against her, albeit shakily.

            “You’re welcome,” Rey added, pointedly.

            He wasn’t looking at her.  A veritable storm of force-radiant desire broke over Rey’s senses like a tidal wave washing through her mind, and that was more than enough to send her, now fuming, back through the meadow to her own hut without any further comment.

            Sod him, he wasn’t going to trick her.  They had a _similarity_ in power, not a difference.  Did Kylo not understand that, or did he simply refuse to recognize it?

            It was better to wait, to watch, to see.  Rey understood waiting.  Surely no one could command or mind-trick her into doing anything if she remained silent, after all.

            At night, every night, Rey could see the light of Kylo’s fireplace across the meadow, presenting a dim, unused path between their separate shelters.  She didn’t need the force to sense that Kylo hardly ever slept.  The man seemed awake both early in the morning and then quite late into the night.  Rey couldn’t help but marvel, at least a little, at Kylo’s knack for sleepless hardheadedness — _and_ at the pain that he kept mending, always darkly, always temporarily, by drawing on his endless rage, his fathomless bitterness, and that curious new despair she’d sensed out of him, too. 

            Something about the island breeze at night bothered Kylo immeasurably.  Something that wafted on the wind.  Something he hid from her.

            Rey knew Kylo wondered why the First Order hadn’t arrived to extricate him from this demented situation.  She knew, also, that he still expected _her_ to come along, somehow, albeit not as easily as he once thought, and his unflinching mental conclusion on this point made Rey rather disinclined to break their new, uneasy impasse.  Kylo lamented whatever the Order was up to without his guidance, often gritting his teeth over a certain name in his head: **_Hux._** The name filtered into the force between them with some frequency, laced with profanity and mistrust.  Rey puzzled over it.

**_Get me out of here_** **,** Kylo had thought at her, over the force. 

            What happened to a monster when there was nothing to destroy?

            For her part, Rey kept waiting.  She meditated, nodding over Luke’s tolerant ghost-teaching in her head.  She read the ancient Jedi texts, making sure her force-walls were well-and-truly intact before doing so.  She scavenged for food and assorted useful thingamabobs — and privately, secretly, collected as many flowers as possible.  She tinkered with her experiments, looking askance at Kylo as he strode by on his way to and from the jungle.  He usually popped up somewhere nearby whenever she started making a mechanical racket, as if he were drawn to or irritated by the sound.

            She wondered how much ground the Resistance had reclaimed in Kylo’s absence.  Luke assured her that all was well, but even he couldn’t reveal too much — her force-connection with Kylo was bound to sputter back into full strength sooner or later, and then Rey would be right back in the potentially-compromised territory she’d found herself before.  She wondered if her compatriots missed her, or needed her.  She hoped they did not, and yet, in some small, lonely way, she hoped that they _did_.  Would Chewie recall her co-piloting skills?  Did Poe give BB-8 twice the amiable pats, now that Rey couldn’t add to them?  Did Finn remember their nicknames, mourning the loss of his favorite wizard? 

            Time slipped by, and Rey began to feel that the nameless moon was desperately lonely.  It matched her.  It _was_ her.  It was not Jakku, but it might as well have been. 

            And like terraformed, rain-distributing clockwork, Rey’s force-flown feelings always threaded themselves into similar ones, now — simmering silently at the other end of the meadow, and fading off into an aching, seemingly-inextricable knot of despair.

 

***

 

            An unusual morning loomed.

            Unusual was not always good, not anymore.

            As Rey wandered along the mossy, tangled chaparral at the jungle’s edge, she could hear the sound of Kylo’s footsteps drawing closer.  He seemed to be thwacking something through the underbrush.

            Gods, how annoying.  Rey _certainly_ wouldn’t have gone wilderness-scavenging if she’d known Kylo would be wandering so far afield.  She should have sensed him earlier.  He usually lingered in his hut during the moon’s hotter days.

            Continued-avoidance on her mind, Rey scanned upward.  No time to climb a tree.  Instead, Rey backed herself into a large, profoundly-leafy shrub.  The inclination made her feel a little stupid, but she rustled in nonetheless, hiding the two items she carried along with her.  Maybe Kylo wouldn’t see her, or perceive her, and she could go on about her own pursuits in relative, albeit uneasy, peace. 

            Surely _he_ felt the same way, after all.

            Fully obscured in the shrub-shadows, Rey scrutinized Kylo’s appearance from within the foliage.  He held a surprisingly-long tree branch in one hand, and carried his boots in the other.  Sweat poured from him in rivulets.  He appeared to be shirtless — why did he always appear in that state, Rey pondered flatly, whenever she most wanted him _not_ to be? — and as he drew closer, she could reflectively sense the calloused skin of his feet on the cool, shaded earth … the dampness of his hair where it plastered to his neck … and above all, the sense of agony emanating from his stubbornly-unhealed wounds.  Pain spasmed through his bandaged side, just barely stitched-back by his own tumultuous control. 

            Kylo loped past her hidden position silently, entering and then exiting from view.  The branch, trailing along behind him, followed suit.

            Rey gave a soundless sigh.  She supposed she could thank the frondy darkness of the shrub for its temporary respite.

**_You used to be better at hiding_**.

            Her mouth, still ajar from the sigh, crinkled into a frown.  Useless, sodding shrub. 

**_Do I frighten you that much?_** Kylo’s force-floating voice paused briefly before losing its cool resolve to outright bitterness. **_Do you think I won’t be able to TRICK you, if you hide?_**

            Both of Rey’s eyebrows shot up as she stomped out of the traitorous shrub, keeping one of her carried items behind her back as she went.  “Neither,” she flung at him, sharply brushing an errant leaf from her hair.

            Kylo stood a few paces away, watching her without expression.  The bitterness in his reflected thoughts could not be accounted for in his face.  He shifted his stance slightly, one end of the branch set against the jungle floor.

            Rey stared over at him as the purpose of the branch reached her awareness.  Images of Kylo spinning the substitute implement as one might spin a lightstaff poured forth from the force … she saw him sparring with silent, brambly trees … lunging, raging, drawing on the pain his efforts wrought from his all-too-crumpled reserves.  “You’re _training_ ,” Rey blurted out, at last.  “You’re wounded, and you won’t let me help, and you’re _training_.”

            His gaze sidled away from hers, studying the ground.  “What of it?”

            “You’re just making your injuries worse,” Rey pointed out, unable to make herself sound nonchalant.

            Kylo merely looked back at her again.  For an unbelievable moment, he seemed mildly embarrassed.  Then his jaw twitched.  “What have _you_ got there?” he muttered.

            Rey sighed.  It seemed they were talking again.  She held up the hand at her side where she clutched a chunk of something dense and greenish.  “Polystarch,” she explained, a bit awkwardly. “Portion-bread.”  She remembered offering one to Kylo shortly after he’d arrived; he’d left it unused in a supply-bundle, and she hadn’t known whether he lacked understanding on how to use it or whether he refused to eat such primitive, Rey-like fare.  Did he feel it was beneath him?

            Kylo’s brows furrowed slightly.  “No.  What are you hiding in your _other_ hand?”

            “I’m not hiding anything.”  She frowned.

            “You are.  Behind your back.”

            “Oh.  That.”  It was Rey’s turn to sidle her gaze away.  “It’s just … some flowers.”  In seeming defiance of her _own_ odd embarrassment, she whisked the small bundle of them into view from behind her back.  The mysterious specimens were dark blue, spotted with red, and ringed with copiously-ruffled petals, the like of which she had never encountered before.

            Kylo blinked down at the colorful bundle.  He seemed mildly surprised to catch Rey with something so unproductive, so frivolous.  Something turned over inside of him, too, something darker, and deeper, and over the force, Rey sensed the answer to a recent mystery.  Kylo hadn’t been sleeping well, in part, because in the night — every night — the tropical breeze lifted the heady scent of such flowers into the air.  Their scent drifted into his hut, into his senses.  Flowers grew everywhere here, and they were practically driving him mad.  The whole damned moon smelled like flowers. 

            The whole damned moon smelled like Rey.

            Willing her cheeks not to flush over her realizations, Rey rested the apparently-offending flowers on the ground behind her.  She stood back up.  “Do you,” she ventured, the old diversion tactics in her tone, “want to try some portion-bread?”

            Kylo regarded her.  Rey could sense him processing her reveal of the flowers, wondering what exactly they meant.  They meant _something_.  His hands hung loosely at his sides — it was his way, Rey understood now, whenever he was thinking.  “Portion-bread,” he echoed.  “Why?” 

            “For a change,” she replied.  “You must be tired of the same food all the time.”  She broke off a piece of polystarch and tossed it over to him. 

            Kylo stiffened and caught the sample, although he had to lean forward a little to do so.  Rey hadn’t come any closer to him in order to pass her offering along, and Kylo began processing _that_ in the same way as he had the flowers.

            Without comment, Rey took another piece for herself and commenced chewing.

            Kylo inspected this new, crumbly, apparently-unfamiliar morsel.  It didn’t seem like much.  **_Flour … something powdery … why is it green?_**

            Rey had already finished hers.  She studied his mystification.  “It’s just food, Ben.”

            His eyes flickered to her, darkening slightly at her persistent use of his former name.  Wordlessly, however, he popped the crumb into his mouth.  Chewed.  Chewed some more.  Chewed a little longer.  Finished.

            “Thoughts?”  Rey’s mouth was twitching. 

            Kylo shook his head, apparently still processing.

            “I know.  There’s not much to it.”  One corner of Rey’s lips turned up.  “Rather like wet air.”  She turned her attention to her knapsack now, pawing through its scavenged contents as if searching for the best place to stow the rest of the polystarch.  “It tastes better with greens, or a root or two.  And you can pour stew over it.  It’s pretty filling, though, as long as you land yourself a whole portion.  Whole portions are almost _too_ much, really.”

            “Oh?”  Kylo’s voice sounded both low and tentative.

            Rey barely heard him; she was still rummaging.  “My old junk boss on Jakku liked to bargain with them.  Fancied himself a real negotiator, that stuck-up slime.  Kept us hungry, kept us working.  He never realized we could’ve found more if we’d been well-fed — ”  Rey broke off abruptly.  She was babbling again, and Kylo had let her, and she didn’t understand why.  He must have already known this information.  Rey recalled _how_ he knew, too, and the memory made her scowl.  She snapped her knapsack closed.

            What else was Rey to do?  How else was she to fill the awkward spaces when her dark, demanding prisoner-companion hardly ever spoke, choosing instead to writhe internally, eternally, in pain?  Avoiding Kylo’s gaze, as usual, Rey gathered the offending flowers from the ground back into her grasp.  “Well.”  She paused.  “Best of luck with damaging yourself.”

            She heard Kylo exhale, then wince.  He attempted to restrain something from escaping into her notice over the force. 

            His effort didn’t work.  It was more **_pity._**

            Rey’s hold on the flowers tightened as she started back through the jungle.  When Kylo rifled through her head on Starkiller Base, he saw her life on Jakku.  He understood the haunted, desperate scope of being hungry as no one from such a comparatively-privileged existence ever could.  Yet now that Kylo had a taste of his _own_ polystarch, it seemed he forgot himself — forgot that Rey refused to be pitied, forgot that she wanted none of his bizarre, scheming mind-tricks, and _especially_ forgot that she disliked being followed, which Kylo now did.  His bare feet trailed the track of her own booted pair.

            Gods, she hated this.  She hated him.  _Hate_.  Rey propelled the defiant feeling over the force, as one might release an avenging starship from its moorings.

            With a distinct jolt, Kylo came to a full and utter stop.  “You mentioned bargains,” he announced with a strange swiftness, his eyes fixed on her back.  “Strike one with me.” 

            Rey chuffed at his commanding tone and kept walking.  “For once in your sodding life, Kylo Ren, you’re in no position to negotiate.”

            “You haven’t heard this bargain.”  Kylo leaned on the branch; it creaked slightly from the weight of his considerable frame.  “It’s not an order.  Not a trick.” 

            Rey said nothing.  She was still walking.

            “You can heal me,” Kylo said, simply, evenly, “if I can kiss you.”

            As expected, Rey turned.  Stared.  Snorted.  “That’s not a proper bargain,” she declared at last, quite icily.

            His eyes remained unmoving.  “Why not?”

            “Because they both help _you_.”  Rey shifted slightly.  “You stand to lose nothing.  Your wound improves, _and_ you get another chance to — to trick me.”

            Kylo huffed.  “Healing won’t help me, not the way I see it.  The light weakens me.”  He folded his arms across his relatively well-bandaged chest.  “And if you hate me so much … if I’m just tricking you, Rey, then what should it matter?”

            “Because you’re still trying to _claim me_ ,” she persisted, frowning now.  The image of Kylo trying to steal a kiss from her beside the waterfall-pool flared to life in the force between them. 

            He studied her for a long moment.  “Are you going to be afraid of bandits your whole life?”

            “I’m _not_ afraid of … ”  Rey trailed off.  She paused.  Then, she drew herself up to her full height.  In the pooling light of the jungle, somewhere between her stance and her shadow, Rey looked, for once, visibly taller than Kylo.  “I will if I want to be,” Rey declared, unflinchingly.  “That’s not your decision.”

            “You’re right,” Kylo replied, quietly.  “It’s yours.”  He leaned forward.  “Where is your Jedi confidence, scavenger?”

            Rey glared, her chin lifting.  “I have all the confidence I require, when it comes to you.”  Momentarily lost in thought, she tapped the flower-bundle against the hem of her tunic.  Healing Kylo _was_ essential.  Moreover, on this uncharted moon, she, Rey, represented the Resistance, while Kylo represented the Order.  A bargain seemed like a diplomatic microcosm, or at least a test of sorts.  The fact that he’d ventured any sort of negotiation at all proved that Kylo was, at least, thinking. 

            Thinking about change.

            The sunlight sliced through the canopy of chaparral-strewn trees.  Creatures continued to creak around them, their calls filtering through the humid mist.  “Do you want me to heal you now?” Rey asked.  She didn’t meet Kylo’s eyes.  Her gaze remained, resolutely, on the sunlight.

            He looked at her.  “Tonight will do.”

            “On neutral ground, I suppose?”  Rey’s mouth made a funny shape — sort of a rueful, upside-down v.

            He kept looking at her.  “The beach?”

            She shook her head.  “The meadow.  That way I won’t be in your hut, and you won’t be in mine.”  She rolled her eyes and turned on the old heel.  “I’ll heal you for one kiss, Ben.  It’s a very poor bargain.”

            Kylo almost agreed.

 

***

 

_Relax … reach out with your mind …_

            Her eyes closed, Rey breathed in.  She breathed out.

_Reach through the pain … to touch the Force …_

            Rey’s eyebrows knit.  It was impossible not to receive some of Kylo’s pain along with the procedure.  Even now, agony washed over her, stemming from the inflamed, blackened-to-burgundy lesions beneath her floating fingers … worse, she could feel that the _real_ wound stemmed far too deeply, remained far too sunken-in ... it twisted, suffocatingly, beneath the monstrous depths of Kylo Ren.  Everything inside of Rey wanted to charge, to bare her teeth, to fight. 

            Gods, her emotions were too wild.  It wasn’t just the light that called to her.  The darkness lurked there too. 

            It always lurked there.

_Relax_ , Luke’s ghostly voice reassured her, ever the intermittent advisor in her head.  _We’re not stones.  The light is made up of all things, even emotions … some of them, anyway …_

_I wish I WERE a stone,_ Rey sent him. 

            _I know the feeling_ , he sent back.

            Rey’s fingers straightened with resolve.  _A stone_ … _like lifting a stone .._.  Her hand floated along, mere inches over the mangled skin below.  It was just skin.  Just blood.  These were just bones.  This was just a man.  _Knit bones …_ there was only the Force … _mend flesh …_ she was it, and it was with her, and it was with this dark, hopeless son-of-a-Skywalker, too ... _renew!_

_**Rey ...** _

            Not wanting to break her concentration, Rey peeped down through her lashes at Kylo.  In the open meadow where he lay, the evening breeze fanned an assortment of grasses, flowers, and tropical-weeds against his bandage-free chest.  Kneeling next to him, Rey could feel where the vegetation brushed against his skin. 

            Kylo’s eyes were dark and round.  Rey was so close — gods, the look of her, the light in her face, the slope of her neck where she bent over him out of obstinate, indomitable, senseless, soft concern — and gradually, remarkably, some of the pain ebbed away from him.  Kylo stared up at the sky beyond Rey as if seeing its massively-bright ocean of stars for the first time. 

            He felt … good. 

            No.

            He felt _weak_. 

            The lapse in pain brought him pleasure.  The light suffused his strength.  Rey was robbing him blind, taking away some of the dark power he knew.  She was scavenging it, grafting it with her own.  She meant to build something different out of it.  Thief.  Willful, impudent girl.

            Kylo wanted to stop.  He wanted her to stop.  Yet practically glowing, openly staring, he also didn’t want to move a muscle.

            But Rey _had_ stopped.  Somehow, she was already bandaging him, already turning to hand him his tunic.  “That should do, at least for a few days,” she said, not even looking his way any longer.  “You’ll likely need more.”

            Kylo rolled to sit, then to stand, his jaw working.  Sharply, heatedly, he pulled the tunic over his head.  His wounds hardly hurt at all. 

            Rey brushed flowery grasses from her knees as she stood up, still talking.  “I’m sure I could do it better if I’d been able to study longer.”  It was not so hard to be nonchalant now, she thought.  Somehow, it felt easier.  Perhaps practice _did_ make perfect.  For a long, searching moment, Rey looked back toward the builder’s huts behind them.  In the darkness, the two separate fires from their two separate shelters burned softly — located at opposite ends of the meadow, the lights looked like the eyes of some great, voiceless beast.

            “You forget our bargain.”  Kylo’s voice was low in his throat.

            Rey stiffened slightly as she turned to face him.  “How could I forget?  You want your sodding kiss.  It won’t change anything.”

            Kylo stood across from her.  Jaw clenched, his face was filled with an accusing, rattled light that Rey could not — or rather, would not — process.  “You agreed,” he pointed out.  “I didn’t make you.”

            Rey’s hands went, akimbo, to her hips.  “That’s not exactly how choice works,” she retorted, seemingly struggling not to boil over.

            He regarded her for a beat or two.  “You _bargained_.”

            “Yes,” Rey returned, defiantly.  A dark fury clouded her gaze.  “You want me to repeat it?  I healed you, and in return I’ll let you kiss me.  Once.  You can kiss me once.”

            “Only we didn’t agree,” Kylo extended her statement, his tone assuming a kind of rumbling croon, “on _where_.”

            “I don’t care,” she spat.  “Here is fine.”

            Kylo waited, folding his arms behind his back.  His look remained impassive as his meaning suddenly bloomed in Rey’s realization.

            She seized up in spite of herself, her cheeks turning scarlet.  An image of Kylo poised at the apex of Rey’s hips, slaking whatever coercive, corrupted thirst he was considering out of her, twisted into her senses.  “You … ” Rey hissed, but she trailed off, the words _daft snake_ all but sparking to life in the force-frenzied air between them.  “As if I’d let you kiss me somewhere _peculiar!_ ”

            “You still think the worst of me.”  Kylo studied her, the old rush of dark, confusing thrills coursing through the light-scarred depths of him.  He moved closer, sweeping through the waving grass as he went.

            Rey wasn’t about to give Kylo what she now suspected might very well be satisfaction from backing away.  Under the stars, she stood her ground.  Suspicious, yet processing.  Incensed, but abiding.  “I think of you as you _are_.  You haven’t earned anything, haven’t proved anything.”

            “You said I could kiss you,” he muttered, looming before her.  “I’ll kiss you where I like.  I’ll kiss you where it counts.”

            “And I’ll loot your teeth if I don’t agree.”  Rey’s glare was poisonous.

            Kylo’s lips twitched as he stared down at her.  “I expect nothing less.”

            Rey fought not to lean away from him, her own lips tightening.  How could he do this, after what she’d told him?  She knew she’d thrown him utterly by healing him with light, while he was awake, but why do this?  Hadn’t he smelled the bandit in her vision, or seen how similar their disgusting purposes were?  Rey’s lashes fluttered closed as she scowled.  Well, she didn’t have to look.  Looking hadn’t been part of the bargain.

            She had expected him to be different.

            Sod it all, _she had actually expected Kylo Ren to be different_.  How incredibly outlandish of her.  How childishly naïve.

            A rush of air crested over Rey’s skin, but it wasn’t from Kylo’s frayed breathing.  Even though her eyes were pinned shut, she knew that Kylo had only moved in the wind.  He knelt in front of her.  He took hold of her wrist.  _Again?  Why is this sodding madman so obsessed with wrists?_  Rey cracked open her lashes to stare down at him spitefully.

            Pulling her wrist closer, Kylo bent his head over the dissident curve of Rey’s hand.  He didn’t speak.  Firmly, determinedly, he turned Rey’s wrist over, so that her palm was open to the sky.

            They had willingly touched hands before.  It was something he knew.  It was something _she_ knew.  It was safe.

            Rey suddenly realized, however, that Kylo’s gesture was _also_ more than a little lewd.  That same bare, reaching hand was where Rey focused the Force.  Centered there, in the fluttering center of her grasp, lay all the power at her command — it was as if Kylo meant to run his lips over a blaster she held, or a lightsaber she handled, or some other, more electric part of this fierce, rebellious prodigy that she wasn’t willing, yet, to share.

            It wasn’t safe at all.  It was dangerous.  Somehow, it was both.

            Silently, Kylo kissed her open palm.

            And then Rey had no time to sneer in shock or indignation, and Kylo had no time to lay claim to anything else.  Their connection in the force erupted around them, and Rey struggled to stay aloft in her own thoughts as they roiled with Kylo’s.

_Desir **e** … po **s** s **e** ssio **n** … inf **i** ni **t** e, bo **u** ndl **e** ss, d **ar** k and **g** ray and shining ..._

            Every part of Rey’s body ached for solid ground.  The force sang to her.  It was everywhere, it was everything.

            And Kylo could see it.  He could hear it.  He stared through the tangled mass of the force as if he looked toward an impossible home finally made real.

            Rey wanted him _so much_. 

            A curling fervor saturated her, even now, just as it had so many times in the past, so wet and so ravenous that she could hardly think straight.  The desire she felt was hers.  The connection she sought was his.  They were light and dark, together … blending, wanting, as no one else ever could …

            Relief flooded Kylo, as well as triumph.  Finally touching Rey skin to skin, the safety of his lips against the danger of her hand — or vice-versa, or both, and right back again — Kylo could sense he was _not_ tricking her into wanting him.  He didn’t emanate some searching, subconscious pool of Sith-doubt.  Her hunger wasn’t a trick of the darkness; in fact, it was almost entirely the opposite.  Rey’s desire was endless, a glimmering, brilliant, light-gray ocean, somehow more vast, more stunning than anything Kylo had ever seen on either side of the force.

            “You see?” he murmured against her, below her.  “You do.  You resist me, Rey.  You resist yourself.  Can’t you let go?  Do what must be done.  Don’t hesitate.  Give in, give up.  Join me.”  Bargain or no bargain, Kylo could no longer keep his words from taking the form of orders.  His mouth pressed into the curl of Rey’s palm.  He moved higher, feeling the warmth of her wrist where her pulse lured him on.  “Let me have peace.”  Hesitantly, the tip of his tongue tested for purchase against the inside of her wrist.  Her heart pounded beneath it.

_Never._

            With a snap — _no_ — Rey grabbed — **_no_** — pulled — **_n_** _o **!**_ — and finally wrenched her hand back.  The force almost burst both of their eardrums as it dissolved, dizzyingly fast, into the distance of the night.

            They inhaled and exhaled heavily, as one.

            “Not even if you were _the last man in the galaxy_ ,” Rey snarled.  She wheeled.  She fled.

            Kylo stared as her pounding steps vanished into the distance.  And he kept staring, for a long time afterward, as the breeze troubled the meadow.  His fists curled around the flowery grasses pooling at his knees.  He meant to rip them out by the roots — but he didn’t.  He would run Rey down, make her understand — but he couldn’t.  The light knifed inside of him, right where that hostage-taking scavenger must have put it, making all Kylo’s familiar inclinations feel flawed.  He grimaced as he rearranged his posture.  Not even the light could distract him from how grievously hard he was.

            He didn’t understand.  Damn it, he didn’t _understand._   Rey had told him he could earn it, or prove it.  What was he doing wrong?  How could Rey want something so badly and not seize it?  What kind of power was that?

            Gritting his teeth, Kylo looked skyward, as if to focus on the immovable army of stars above.  All he could see was Rey’s face in the meadow, dark and troubled and full of fury, telling him no … never … not even if he was the last man in the galaxy.  “I _might as_ _well_ be the last man in the galaxy,” he whispered his retort into the wilderness.  He wanted to hiss, to growl, but his low, ragged voice wouldn’t obey.  “You put me there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update should be by Monday 3/26. Still trying to stay ahead of this boat-burning behemoth.
> 
> *shimmies over to [Tumblr](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com) for updates and ask-a-trons and such*


	17. Current

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why haven’t you tried to escape this moon?” Kylo asked her.
> 
> Her stare met his.
> 
> “You can build a subspace transceiver,” he went on. “You must be able to.”

            In Rey's bed there laid a lump. 

            Underneath a heavy blanket, the lump had a shape.  Rey’s shape.  Only one eye was visible.  Rey’s eye.  The eye fluttered open.

            Kylo’s face hovered above her bed, looking down at the lump.  He squinted.

            Rey’s eye disappeared beneath the blanket.  “If you’re not gone in _two seconds_ ,” the lump snarled, “I will take you _apart_.”

            No response.  Although hidden, Rey-the-lump sensed Kylo had gone, or at least moved out of visible bond-range. 

            The lump sighed.  Their bond hadn’t activated in a long time; she’d almost dared to hope it had disappeared.  But the lump didn’t want to think about that, or about anything else.  Not right now.  Not after the meadow.  Not after what the force had suggested, and certainly not after what Kylo had proposed.  Not after the way the lump had snarled, dark and ominous and not fully herself.  Instead, the lump visualized the Alliance bunk room on Hoth-4, and for one waking dream of a moment, she imagined herself as Finn, snoozing peacefully, blissfully unaware of what was going on in the hot springs several passages over …

            Rey slept.  Rey drifted.  She got up occasionally and padded out to use the refresher, or sip from a drinking-gourd, or nibble at a handful of sun-dried food.  She always returned to bed.  The call of the lump remained dark and strong. 

            Days passed.  Nights cycled.  Rain battered the domed roof of her hut.

            She drifted.

            “Are you sick?”  Kylo’s voice drifted too, outside the bedchamber door.

            The lump moved slightly.  How long had she been asleep?  How long had Kylo been out there?       

            “Rey.”

            The lump didn’t answer.

            “I told you those Luilris mushrooms looked off last week,” Kylo muttered.  “Did you eat them?”

            The lump growled faintly, apparently implying that she hadn’t.

            “This is foolish.  It’s not like you.  I’m coming in there.”  A clank came from the door where Kylo pressed it.

            The lump sat straight up.  “I’m not sick,” she shouted, “I’m _angry!_ ”

            Kylo exhaled sharply, scornfully.  “And?”

            No answer from within.

            The door clanked again.  He seemed to have removed his hand.  “It’s been days, Rey.” 

            “Oh?” shouted the lump, louder.  “Are _you_ the only one who’s allowed to process things alone?”

            A long pause ensued.  “You’re not alone.”

            Blanket rustling, the lump laid back down with what could only be described as a cold, bitter thud.  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

            Low in his throat, muffled by the door, Kylo made a sound that the lump didn’t recognize. 

            The lump didn’t care.  She only wanted to drift.  How long had it been since she’d slept — really, truly slept, without keeping a mental eye open or remaining on guard?  How long had it been since she’d let herself go, without worrying on which side she’d wake?  Everybody was alone, especially in Wild Space.  Especially if they _wanted_ to be. 

            She kept drifting.

_Come on, padawan,_ Luke’s ghostly voice ambled into her head.

_I’m tired,_ the lump sent.  _I’m tired, you old ghost._

_So, Rey from Nowhere,_ Luke continued, a careful softness in his tone, _you’ve discovered that you’re human._

            The lump grunted.  _Don’t remind me._

_How long did you heal Ben Solo with the light?  Perhaps — absorbed a little too much darkness, you have?_

            Rey’s eyes bolted open.  She stared, for some time, at the ceiling above.

            Her ghost-teacher wasn’t standing next to her with his edges aglow; he’d only appeared in the wild force-winds within her head.  Was _Luke_ alone, wherever he was?  Something about his turn of phrase didn’t sound like it.  Rey couldn’t tell.  She couldn’t remember.  She’d drifted too long, too far.  She only remembered feeling a renewed drive to fight, at the end. 

            Somehow, that drive felt like enough.  That drive felt like everything.

            Rey sat up.  Her mouth felt dry.  The flowers amassed in her bedchamber had bowed their collective heads — they were only desperate for water, but at the moment they looked like mourners at Rey’s bedside.  Guilt washed over her at the state of them.  She felt incredibly stupid for losing her guard, for drifting without a care.  How had she let herself do it?  Was this what Ben felt like, at the beginning of it all?  Nauseated, exhausted, and slightly out of the sync with the present?  _Gods, how awful._ Rey’s stomach growled agreement with her self-accusations as the smell of something sweet filled her senses.

**_Rey?_ **

            Her breathing hitched.  Although Kylo sent his inquiry over the force, Rey could sense him lurking in the main room of her hut.  Again.  Uninvited, this time. 

**_You’re awake._**    An unsteady rush of relief coursed over Kylo’s mental-shields.

            Rey made a face before clearing her throat.  “What are you doing out there?”

            Awkward disdain replaced the relief.  Kylo didn’t answer, but something clattered.  The fire?  A helmet-bowl?

            Suspiciously, Rey got to her feet.  She smoothed the loose, groggy tumble of her hair, ran her fingers over the wilted flowers — _I’ll get you more water, and more of you; I’ll fix you_ — then she unlocked the door and peered out into the main room.

            Her scavenger-supplies and assorted experiments appeared untouched.  One whole polystarch portion-bread sat in a helmet-bowl on the table, puffed out to its fully-hydrated state, and a sweet, juicy smell emanated from the cooking-helmet rigged above the fire.  Rey stared around, agog.  “You’re _cooking_.”  She’d looked at her mechanisms first, food second, and now, at Kylo, third.

            Although inscrutable, his eyes were all over her.  Where Rey was jumbled with sleep, Kylo had the distinct look of a man who hadn’t gotten any proper rest for more than several months.  The dark circles under his eyes hadn’t improved.  “Not really,” he said, simply.

            “What do you call that, then?”  Rey stepped away from his gaze — always a vain attempt, she knew — and peeked into the rigged bowl over the fire.  A red, syrupy substance bubbled within.  “Muja fruit!” she croaked, clearing her throat again.  “Where did you find it?”

            “The jungle.”  Kylo stood by the old builder’s table, clutching one of Rey’s filter-constructed ladles at his side.  “It’s supposed to last longer when it’s boiled down.  I didn’t know how long it should wait.”

            Rey ignored Kylo’s intimation about how long she’d been out of commission.  “Those builders must have terraformed everything!  I haven’t had muja fruit since I was with the ... ”  She trailed off.  _No.  Say it._ “Since I was with the Resistance.”

            Kylo, for his part, ignored Rey’s trailing addition.  Instead, he stepped over to scrutinize her bedchamber through the door she’d finally left open.  Rey felt his eyes widen, then narrow, as they raked over the drooping, crystalline-colored flowers ringing her bed.  He saw petals of every size and shape, blooms the size of cleaner-droids, and tinier blossoms woven throughout, too, star-tipped and white as Jedi’s robes.  Although wilted, the collection still exuded a riot of tropical scents.  “What,” he asked, almost commandingly, “are those for?” 

            Blast it.  “Just flowers.”  She should have shut the door behind her. 

            Kylo’s scrutiny continued, ladle hanging immobile in his hand.  “They’re dying.”

            “They need water.”  Rey looked around for a gourd-canteen.  Where was Kylo going with this? 

            “They’ll always die.”  Kylo moved his scrutiny to Rey.  “Do you use them for something?  Do they make salves?  Or — stimulants?  Some kind of ingredient?”

            “I just like them, all right?  Do I need a reason?”  Rey’s anger flared.  “What are you doing in my home — my hut?  Did you peer at me when I was asleep?”

            “You’ve been sealed in this hut for six days, Rey.”  His tone was surprisingly quiet.

_So long?_ It hadn’t felt that long.  Rey smoothed a hand over her face, but her look darkened anyway.  “You’re one to talk.  You hardly spoke to me for weeks and weeks.”

            “I didn’t _disappear_ ,” Kylo avowed, even more quietly.  “I don’t keep lying to myself.”  His face turned downward, staring fixedly at the ground.  “You trapped me here.”

            It dawned on Rey that, after getting up, she hadn’t pulled her boots _or_ her trousers back on beneath her long over-tunic.  Coloring, she pressed her arms flat against the open sides of the garment.  “I trapped you here?  _You_ flew all the way out here to trap _me_.”

            Kylo’s eyes shot up to hers, then plunged back down to the floor.  His gaze seemed willfully rooted a little too near her, on the ground, near her bare feet.

            Rey pulled both extremities back beneath the shadow of her hem.  Her hands contracted into fists.

            Slowly, Kylo set the ladle down.  “You should eat,” he muttered, turning his back to her.

            Rey blinked at his sudden withdrawal, and then blinked at the portion-bread.  Kylo clearly meant to eat that particular polystarch himself.

            “I’m not hungry; eat.  And I brought you something.  I’ll get it.”  Kylo loped toward the door of her hut, departing without further comment.  Rey sensed him marching away, arms behind his back, intent on whatever he meant to retrieve from his hut across the meadow.

            Rey blinked again.  As if bursting from a daze, she grabbed a gourd-canteen and rushed into the bedchamber.  She hopped back into her trousers and boots, rolling her eyes at herself as she went.  Next, she filled the neglected flower-containers with water, taking a swig of her own as she went along.  She _knew_ why she didn’t want Kylo looking at her in a state of undress, but why didn’t she want him to see her mad meadow-collection, either?  His disdainful scrutiny of them bothered her.  They smelled like her.  They annoyed him and kept him awake, like her. 

            Mostly, though, they simply felt too personal to share with Kylo Ren. 

_As personal as a kiss, offered in a bargain?_ Rey scowled at her own thoughts as she shut the bedchamber loudly behind her.  _You are NOT going to think about that right now, scavenger queen._

            Unable to resist the call of food any longer, she flung herself into a chair and started in on the portion-bread with both hands.  It tasted blessedly routine to her.  Without access to any scavenger-provided food for the past six days, Rey supposed Kylo had been forced to dine on similar rations.  Was _that_ why he looked so rattled by her absence?  Was he just hungry? 

            Rey swallowed dryly, sensed Kylo returning, and sat up, stiffening, all at once. 

            He loomed back into the doorway.   As he crossed to the table, Rey noticed he was frowning.  Her senses, somehow sharper and wilier after her long sleep, examined the reasons.  Because she’d fully-dressed herself?  Somewhat, apparently.  Because she’d shut him out of her mysterious bedchamber again?  That too, a little.  Mostly, however, she realized that Kylo frowned because Rey had visibly stiffened when he appeared.

            “You didn’t try the fruit,” he noted, glancing down at her helmet-bowl.

            “Oh,” Rey replied, haltingly, guardedly.  “No.  Not yet.”

            “It’s meant to go over _that_.”  Kylo gestured toward the much-smaller chunk of polystarch that remained after Rey’s onslaught.  He grabbed the ladle, retrieved some of the red substance from over the fire, and tapped it over what little remained of the chunk.  “You said portions taste better with something poured over them,” he continued, although the timbre of his voice implied that she ought to know this already — that she ought to know he’d been listening — that, even so, all this small, careful talk was extremely annoying.  “Are you going to try it?” he demanded.

            By the stars, was he _insulted?_   Too surprised to snap out a retort, Rey took a retort-worthy bite instead.  Her eyebrows shot up immediately.  Sweet, jellied, and rich, the stewed muja fruit made the portion-bread almost taste … enjoyable.  Rey made a surprised, automatic, tunefully-appreciative noise, the spell of which broke when she realized that Kylo was gazing curiously at her, or at the noise, or both.  Yes, both.  Definitely both. 

            Rey frowned.  “This is very good,” she said, crisply.

            Kylo frowned too, taken aback by Rey’s assorted reactions.  He nodded.

            She took another bite, noiseless this time.  “Did you boil this here because your hut doesn’t have a spit?  I can make one, so you won’t have to use mine.”

            His frown deepened.  Promptly, wordlessly, Kylo set a subject-changing object onto the table.  Black, round, and ringed with red dials, it had the look of a beacon.  It _was_ a beacon, albeit an experimental-looking one.  A deep gash ran through the metal at its center. 

            Rey stared down at it.

            “Why haven’t you tried to escape this moon?” Kylo asked her.

            Her stare met his.

            “You can build a subspace transceiver,” he went on.  “You must be able to.  You’ve filled this hut with every kind of splice and tube.  Freighters or cargo ships are bound to pass in the black, sometime.”  He slid the device closer to her.  “Can you use this?”

            Rey poked at the broken beacon with an index finger.  The gash was sharp.  A haze passed over her expression — the scavenger in her bewitched, the survivor in her evaluating.

            Yes.  She liked this sort of thing best of all.  Kylo folded his long frame into the chair across from her, his eyes never leaving Rey’s preoccupied face.  “Could it work?”

            “How long,” Rey got out, quietly, “have you had this?” 

            “I found it broken in a storage compartment on my ship.  Not because of you,” he pointed out flatly, awkwardly.  “It wasn’t in the cockpit.  I don’t think it ever worked.” 

            “How long have you had this, Ben?” Rey repeated, more quietly.

            “A few weeks,” he replied, brows furrowing.  What was she getting at?

            “I can’t build a subspace transceiver.”  Rey tilted away from the beacon at an odd angle.  “We’re on the edge of Wild Space, and the asteroid field here is too big.  The signal couldn’t reach far enough with that kind of interference.”

            Kylo leaned forward, making up the slight distance Rey had put between herself and his gift.  “But you could boost the signal with something like this.  _You_ could.”

            “It’s broken."  Rey’s voice sounded cold, as though the sugary aura of the muja fruit had turned sickly-sour.  "And even if I could fix it, I wouldn’t.  I don’t want to leave this moon.” 

            “Why?”  Kylo blinked several times in rapid succession.  “There's nothing here.  You could send for help.”

            “Send for help from _where?_ ” Rey demanded, waiting for it to sink in, waiting for the rage she knew was coming.  Kylo _must_ have suspected this part of her scheme before.  He’d said as much after she’d destroyed his TIE silencer.  “If I send a signal out into the black, what happens then?  Where would you go?”

            “The First Order, of course,” Kylo sputtered.  He didn’t fully understand, but he was beginning to.  “I’d get you out of here.  Get _us_ out of here.”

            Rey waited a little longer.  Slowly, she watched the problem’s scope cast a shadow over Kylo’s face.  _Of course_ his scenario wouldn't appeal to her.  _Of course_ she hated his gift.  She didn’t want to leave — at least, not _his_ way.  “You’re trying to bargain.  You still think I owe _you_ , now, here.” His face twitched.  “You think I’ll turn?  I won’t.”

            “Maybe not.  But you’re not going anywhere,” she whispered fiercely.  “And neither am I.”

            “You think to be my jailer, when you’re imprisoned too?”  His eyes bored into her. “You want to stay here forever, like this?  Hating me — denying yourself — ”

            Rey’s hands flattened against the table.  “I don’t want the First Order to come within one blasted parsac of this moon.”  Her look was dark.  “I’d rather die.”

            “Rey.”  Kylo stood, aghast.  He should be furious with her, but the dreadful light twisting down in his gut suggested otherwise.  “I was only trying to give you something you might have lacked.  I didn’t use this — this didn’t work when I — you’ve said it yourself, before.  The First Order doesn’t know where I am.”

            “I need some air.”  Blindly, Rey pushed herself to her feet and grabbed her knapsack.

            “ _Rey_ ,” Kylo flung out, his face pale, tensing, flinching.  **_Sta_** _y **!  Ta** l **k!  Let me — fix** t **his!**_ “It’s been six days, Rey.  I didn’t know what was wrong with you.”

            “Counting the days, Supreme Leader?”  Rey paused in the doorway.  A vision of tally-marks bloomed in the force between them, all but covering the walls.  Like mist on a glass window, other images followed: interrogation chambers, men screaming, blasters freezing, firing, striking targets deadly true.  “I imagine you’ll get quite good at it.”

 

***

 

            Rey’s trek through the jungle lacked any semblance of peace.  She was too fogged up.  Too weighed down.  Too angry.

            Kylo hadn’t followed her.  He seemed frozen in place.  She’d sensed him throwing something, likely the ladle, as she entered the treeline, but that was all.  Perhaps he’d shut off the bond.  Someday, perhaps, it would stay off permanently.

            Good.

            She removed her boots as soon as she hit the beach.  The sun-warmed, grainy texture felt familiar, if not entirely welcome, as Rey walked from sand to surf.  There, familiar ground met unfamiliar ground, and she drifted — awake this time — down the shore, letting the current of the waves break over her feet as she went.

            It made a pretty prison-cell, at least.

            She could see the sunken form of her shuttle in the shallow distance of the cove.  An entire _flock_ of flying-creatures roosted there now, some bold enough to make nests.  Rey glared at Kylo’s gutted TIE-silencer as she passed by.  No creatures roosted on _his_ craft; even when destroyed by a scavenger such as she, it remained too sharp, too imposing.  Too complicated.

            Eventually Rey found a patch of beach without any visible recent history in either direction.  There, she faced the sea.  She dropped her boots onto the sand.  She sat, cross-legged, and closed her eyes. 

            She breathed.

_You’ve had quite a time,_ Luke mused.  Over the force, in her meditative state, Rey could almost see the hooded outline of his ghostly, glowing form in her head.

_I’ve had quite a LIFE_ , Rey replied.  She fought to match her fast-beating heart to the rhythm of the unhurried, unemotional, unbothered waves.  She didn’t succeed. 

_Well, padawan, it’s not going to get any easier._   Luke sounded slightly more concerned than usual.  _But you’ll figure it out._

            Rey breathed silently for a few beats.  _Tell General Organa that Kylo Ren has a beacon.  It’s broken.  I don’t know if it sent out a signal to the First Order or not, or if they can find us here._ She paused.  _I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know why I … feel … like this._

_What is it you want, Rey?_ Luke asked, softly.

            Her forehead puckered.  That was her whole blasted trouble, wasn’t it?  Rey had kept her own desires to herself for so long.  How could she have done anything else?  Neglected, alone, and further isolated by the eccentric confines of her own mechanically-inclined mind, she’d been unable to change anything, do anything, go anywhere, for almost the entirety of her life.  Rey’s desires were the dark mirror into which she could not look. 

            And then Ben — Kylo Ren — had to go and _make_ her look, with one kiss that turned out to be peculiar after all.

_I want to study the ways of the Jedi,_ Rey ventured. _Like you, Luke._

_That’s very flattering._ His tone suggested that his eyes were rolling.  _Just one question, though: what do YOU want, Rey?_

            Dutifully, her mouth crinkling, Rey allowed her thoughts to delve deeper.  _I want to see a galaxy at peace.  To be an instrument of the Force.  To know that my friends are safe … and happy.  I want to find … to be part of ... a kind of family …_ Rey felt something inside of her shift, even though she meditated, even though she focused … _and to **take**_ _— to make a ho **m** e.  To k **now** what it **m** eans to love som **eb** ody._

            Luke seemed to pause, seemed to wait.   _Is that enough for you?_

            Rey could feel The Something roiling around in the darkness within her, tugging at the corners of her awareness.  Had she truly absorbed too much darkness after healing Ben with the light, or was this shadow something that had always been there, deep inside of her?  **_Contro_** _l,_ Rey murmured, over the force. _I’ve ne **ver had it.** I **wan** t to have c **ontrol, enoug** h to make all those things possi **ble.**_

            A long, many-layered sigh came out of whatever space Luke’s force-ghost inhabited.  _That’s going to have to be a choice you make.  A deal you strike.  A battle you fight._

_What sho **uld** I do?  _ Rey implored, fighting to push the strangeness away.  _What’s my **d** estiny, Luke?  _

            Her teacher deliberated for a moment.  _What if I told you that there IS no destiny, Rey?  What if there are only choices?_

**_W_** _ere **n’t** the Jedi all about destiny?  _She shoved the strangeness away from her, off its feet, into the shadows.  _Didn’t they fight epic battles, and see their lives written in the stars?_

_Some of them, sure.  Cocky old wizards._ Luke rubbed a hand against his chin, or so she sensed — she couldn’t physically see him doing so.  _You want to know what I think?  I think balance is all about choice.  Destiny?  That’s inescapable.  But you can always make another choice, Rey.  You can always fight another fight._

            Rey blew an errant strand of hair out of her face.  She wasn’t sure she understood, but she had another question all the same.  _Luke, did I miss something when you and General Organa showed me how to heal like a Jedi?  If I absorbed too much darkness, wouldn’t Kylo … wouldn’t Ben absorb some of the light, too?_

            Luke’s presence began to fade away as if carried by an invisible tide.  _That’s the theory, padawan …_

_Then why - isn’t – he - free?_ Rey called into the waning ether inside of her senses.

            There was no answer.  Legendary endlessness aside, the Force could be notoriously unreliable sometimes.

            Rey sat, legs still crossed, eyes still closed, biting back the corners of her lips with frustration.  Every time _Kylo_ made a choice, it seemed he rejected the light that flowed within him.  He had rescued her from Snoke, _and_ he had accepted healing light from the Force.  Why did he hang on?  Why did he stay in the darkness? 

            For a long while Rey continued meditating, letting the sea breeze stir around her, allowing the repetitive thrum of the waves to cool the disturbance within her.  After some time, she felt a shadow pulling at the corners of her realization — not from within, but from without — and her focused mind followed that same shadow all the way down the beach until she heard him hunkering down in the sand across from her.

            Rey didn’t open her eyes.  She felt calm, just like a Jedi.  She was emotionless, like she wanted to be.  She had control. 

            Right?

            “Rey,” Kylo began, “you — ”

_Stop staring at me_ , Rey interrupted him, sending her words over the force-bond between them.  She didn’t move.  Calm.  Emotionless.  Controlled. 

            He scowled so darkly that it nearly breached her senses.  **_Your eyes are closed.  It shouldn’t bother you_**.

_But it does,_ Rey pointed out, more firmly than calmly. 

            Kylo let out a long, irritated sigh, fed up with trying to understand other people, light-siders, _her_.  Nevertheless, she felt his gaze reroute onto the vast detention-block of the sea.  For a long while, only the waves spoke, washing to and fro in a wilderness of their own. 

_I said I needed air_ , Rey sent him, finally.

**_But I waited,_** Kylo pointed out.  **_Gave you space.  Gave you time._**

_Not enough,_ Rey retorted coolly.  Nonchalantly.  Nothing to see here.  Meditation allowed her to refocus and fold back, or at least compact, her anger.  Maybe that dark strangeness she’d absorbed was gone.  It was probably gone.  Best not to think of it now, or ever again. 

            Kylo’s fingers tapped against his leg.  **_How much time do you need?_**   

_As much as I want._

            The adjacent sand trembled as Kylo began lurching back to his feet, grumbling.

_But if you’re going to sit there,_ Rey went on, recognizing that he was going to take his leave, _you should meditate with me._

            The sand stopped trembling.  **_I don’t —_** “I don’t do that.”

             Rey opened her eyes.  “Why not?”  Several paces apart, Kylo hunched half-up, half-down, his black clothes covered by white sand he hadn’t yet brushed away. 

            At her look, he lowered himself back down, slumping into some semblance of her own seated position.  “I used to.”  He scowled, dusting wet sand off of his gloves.  Like all sand, it went practically nowhere.  “Jedi meditation is a lie.”

            “Being still is a lie?”  Rey’s lips twitched.

            “Yes,” Kylo decreed, slumping further.  “Call it a trick, if that helps you.  No one’s still."  He paused, eyeing her.  "The Sith meditated too, you know.  Are you comfortable with a technique that can go in either direction?”

            Despite her enforced calm, Rey’s eyes seemed harder than usual.  “Should we bellow and throw things instead?” 

            Kylo opened his mouth to snap at her impertinence, then promptly shut it again.  For some reason, the hardness in Rey’s gaze bothered him.  For another, the vision she’d sent him of scrawled tally-marks bothered him even more.

            She regarded him for a moment.  “If you don’t want to meditate,” she allowed, “then you can just sit.  I’m not finished.”  Rey closed her eyes.  “And don’t stare.” 

            “Fine.”  Jaw working back and forth, Kylo glowered at the horizon.  **_If you think I don’t know that sitting silently is just meditation by a different description —_**

_Shh._

            Time passed. 

            The current of the waves proved hypnotic. 

            Rey could feel Kylo’s eyes drifting closed.  He _was_ exhausted, after all.  A sense of gray, troubled stillness wafted from him as his mental-shields went down ... not completely, but just enough for Rey to see a little more clearly into his fractured consciousness … a labyrinth of pictures, mirrors, images, memories … they were in there … maybe he’d give them to her …

            Inside Kylo's stillness, all Rey could see was herself.

            She saw the unresponsive lump in her bed, terrifying him.  She watched her shuttle dive toward that last deadly asteroid, terrifying him most of all.  Her face came into view above him, full of light as she healed him in the meadow.  **_Did_** _ **she l** ig **ht up like that all** ove **r …**_ The noise she made when something tasted good echoed in his brain.  Louder.  Darker.  Repeated.  **_Wha_** _ **t ot** he **r noises did she make, and how could he coax them** **o** ut of he **r ...**_ She witnessed herself from below, glowing in the night, standing on the branch of a jungle tree.  **_Why_ _w_** _ **on’t she turn?  Wh** a **t if she d** isappears ag **ain?  What** must I d **o?**_

            She was scared.  Scared of him.  Scared of herself.

            Hated him.  Wanted him.

            Earn it.  Prove it.

            What did she like … what did she want … what did she need ... **  
**

**_Calm_ ** _**… emotion** le **ss … co** n **trol …**_

            Heart pounding, Rey disengaged from the muddle of Kylo’s mind.  One thing was certain: in whatever twisted fashion he meditated now, he didn’t seem to be capable of focusing on anything other than _her_.  Was he asleep?  Could he be drifting, like she had in her hut?  Sod it, was Kylo only testing her?  Rey cracked open an eye to peer at him. 

            Kylo hadn’t moved.  His eyes were closed.  He did, however, sniff derisively when he felt her gaze.  **_What is it, Jedi?_**

_It’s nothing,_ Rey sent him, scowling.  She’d absorbed his scowl.  He couldn’t possibly know how deeply she’d seen into his buried consciousness.  Yet somehow, for some reason, Rey could feel Kylo expected her to call him a Sith, or a wasteoid, or Supreme Leader of the Scar, or the old familiar monster.  Any of her angry nicknames for him would do. 

            Rey tilted her chin up to the blue as she closed her investigatory eye.  _It’s nothing, Ben._

            He grunted wordlessly. 

            They sat in silence.  The sea rolled beyond them, going nowhere, everywhere, all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I made a silly little moodboard for this chapter [here](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/172224088870/burn-the-boats-chapter-17-current), plus one for the whole castaway-enchilada [here](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/171645544250/moodboard-for-my-burn-the-boats-fic-needed-some).
> 
> Next chapter should be posted by ~~Monday April 2 or~~ Monday April 9, depending on life and other time-nibbling nonsense. *rubs crick from neck, walks into the sea in a melodramatic fashion, walks right out again because cold cold cold*
> 
> Comments and space-thoughts welcome, both here and around [Tumblrtown](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com)!


	18. Cascade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I haven’t touched you.” Kylo tilted his neck to study her, his arms hanging at his sides. Water dotted his face, his shoulders, his scars. _Her_ scars. A sense of conflicted, wound-spiking warmth radiated from him.
> 
> “You’d like to, though,” Rey stated.

**_What happens if we_**   _r **un**_   ** _out of food?_**

            Rey opened her eyes and gave Kylo a  _look_.  

            Over the past few weeks he’d been fairly quiet.  Tersely obliging, even.  He’d foraged with her several times.  His force-sutured wounds had grown faint and numb, and he kept her out of his head more often than not.  She’d constructed a spit over the fireplace in his hut, but he seemed more offended than thankful for it.  His meditation-interruptions, like this one, began shortly afterward.  

            A lighter, less-careful Rey might have assumed Kylo was simply out of practice.  Yet he interrupted so pointedly, so willfully, his coolly-voiced doubts flying over the bond between them, that she knew he was up to something.  “We won’t run out of food," she contended.  "We have an entire moon’s-worth.  You just have to learn where to find it.”

            Kylo sat across from Rey on the beach.  He noted her pursed lips, her narrowed eyes — he recognized, as most companions learn to recognize, _The Look_.  He had not, however, learned what to do when The Look appeared.  “What happens if you get hurt?” he went on, squinting at her in the morning sun.

            Rey shifted.  She didn’t like that question.  “Then I’ll heal myself.” 

            “What happens,” Kylo continued, inclining his forehead to indicate her arm, “when our clothes wear out?”

            Rey clapped a hand against her shoulder, covering a sizable tear in one of her arm-wraps.  “Then I’ll blind you,” she snapped.  “Anything else?”

            His face twitched.  “That seems dramatic.”

            “Look who’s learning about being overly-dramatic.”  Rey rubbed her arm, remembering the thorny patch of jungle flowers that proved her wrap’s downfall — a small, clumsy event that now bothered her in a befuddling way.  She didn’t move her hand.

            “You don’t have to cover it up."  His voice was low.  "I’ve seen more than that, as you recall.”

            “If you think getting a peek at me in the hot springs months ago _meant_ something, then you are sadly mistaken.”  Rey glared.  “I heard your bucketheads found that old Rebel Alliance base, by the way.  I suppose you had it burned.”

            Kylo blinked once, before his look turned blank and steady.  “Yes, I did.” 

            “Did that satisfy you?”  Her rising fury burst forth loud and clear, echoing along the shore.  “Does it make you happy, burning down every last vestige of rebellion in the galaxy?  You claim you want to let the past die, but I can’t think of anything more rooted in the past than an emperor and his blasted troops, hell-bent on darkness and destruction — ”  Rey cut herself off, almost physically forcing her sweeping condemnations aside.  She heard a thumping sound.  She stood up. 

            Kylo’s eyes bored into her. 

            Scowling, Rey sat back down.  She squeezed her eyes shut.  She wasn’t going to let him ruin her focus.  Or her day.  Or her life.    
  
            No more than he already had.

            The sea was unhurried.  _She_ was unhurried.  _There is no **emot** ion, there is peace_ ... Kylo Ren, that nerve burner … _there is no **pas** sion, there is serenity.  _Did he hate _everything_ about the Jedi, even their concentration? 

            She eventually sensed the image of her outburst featuring prominently in Kylo’s fractured consciousness.  She saw herself shouting ... noticed a scattering of driftwood and beach-pebbles rising into the air around her ... watched them thump down to the shore ... felt something stir against Kylo’s thigh.  **_Her anger was exciting enough; what must it be like to ple_** _ase he_ ** _r?_ **

            Rey made a sputtering noise. 

            **_If you d_** _o_ ** _n’t like what you see in my mind, then you shouldn’t look._**   Kylo’s mental rebuke was indignant, although heat continued radiating behind it.  Rey deduced why: because she was, in fact, looking.  Because Kylo knew she was looking.  Looking even though he’d ordered her not to.

            Her eyes flew open.  “I’ve made myself clear.  Not if you were the last man — ”

            “I haven’t forgotten what you’ve said.  Aloud.”  Kylo glowered at her for a few beats before raking the sand with his gaze.  “As _I’ve_ said, I’d rather practice sparring than meditating.  You ought to train.  You’re angry.”  At her sharp intake of breath, his head dipped into a nod.  “Understandably, maybe.  But still angry.”

            Rey sniffed.  “I’m not going to tilt at you with anger.  Or with branches.” 

            “Ah,” he agreed.  “Yes.  Let’s use lightsabers.”

            She eyed him suspiciously, as she always did when Kylo attempted the dark simulation of a joke.  Rey certainly wasn’t going to return his lightsaber, and she couldn't reveal with whom she _actually_ practiced sparring, either.  “Do you think it’s wise to annoy your jailer?”

            “You’re in the same cell,” he reminded her.  “You could set us free.”

            “It won’t work, Ben.  You’re not leaving.”  Rey could feel Kylo’s fist tighten atop his knee as if it were her own.  She replicated the gesture, sensing the reflection was mutual. 

            Strange.

            The ocean drowned out thought for a few tense minutes.  Neither of them closed their eyes now.  Instead, Rey concentrated on the trail of a flying-creature above the waves.  It keened companionably, gliding toward its flock far down the shore.

            Like the creature, the keening call of the darkness continued to croon in the back of Rey’s head.  **_Let go,_** it sang, _**just let yourself rage.  You needn’t care.**_   Despite it, she managed to wake a little more with each passing day.  Meditating by concentrating on the light helped; Rey _refused_ to concentrate on anything else.  She wouldn’t notice the breeze stirring Kylo’s hair in the corners of her vision.  She wasn’t going to feel his fingers bending back into his palm as if they were extensions of her own.  She refused to look at him, or memorize his features, or acknowledge the physical scope of him in any way.  She shouldn’t think about the fact that something gnawed at him.

            Or should she?  What crooned to Kylo in the back of  _his_  head?  “How’s your wound?” Rey asked him, suddenly.

            Startled, shadowed, Kylo’s eyes bolted over to meet hers.  “It’s — fine.” 

            “Do you feel anything,” she ventured, “different?”

             “Such as?” His face looked impassive. Defensive. Walled-off.

            Rey sighed.  No luck.  No light.  “I’ll probably have to use the force to heal you again.  I’m wondering when you'll need it.” 

            “Now?”  A vision of Rey leaning over him on the beach drifted over Kylo’s side of their bond.  She saw the ocean breaking over the hem of her tunic, saturating the edges of her trousers ... saw herself leaning downward, closing in on his lips, closer ...

            “ _No_ ,” Rey got out, her jaw clenched, “not now.  Not like that.”  
  
            “You don’t like to lose control.”  Kylo’s observation was abrupt and musing.  Another vision wafted from him: bandit-teeth, the ones Rey knocked out of the drunkard who’d kissed her on Jakku.  
  
            “You’re hardly one to talk about control,” Rey retorted.  Why was he thinking about _that?_  
  
            “Perhaps.  But you definitely don’t like to lose control.  I see it.”  Seated on the sand, the morning light suffusing his face, Kylo looked almost compliant.  Almost _suppliant_.  “I can give you that.”

            “Can you?”  She didn't believe him.

            “I can.”  Kylo wasn’t sure he believed himself.

            Rey’s lips flattened.  “If you think you can escape with the right combination of words, you might as well give up.  I can’t be reprogrammed with different wires and functions.”

            He was silent.

            “So there we are, then,” Rey said primly.  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to meditating.  And to keeping the galaxy safe from  _you_.”

            Kylo’s fist remained clenched atop his knee.  His other hand joined it now, on the opposite side.  He didn’t answer.

 

***

 

 _There must be a_   ** _b_** _etter way._

            Rey hopped onto the bank beside the waterfall-spring.  She didn’t _need_ to keep refilling her gourd-canteens here, but she rather liked the walk.  She especially liked the breathing-room, now that Kylo let her alone.

            He’d abandoned their morning beach-meditation long before she finished.  Rey supposed he was training in the jungle, working out his captive tantrums alone. 

            Kylo lacked a teacher to guide him in training now.  He felt he’d surpassed his master — after meeting Snoke, Rey could almost sympathize.  Almost.  Finn and Poe had told her about Kylo’s crimson Crait-barrage, after all.  Rey suspected that he’d sought to take Luke, her  _own_  sporadic teacher, away from her.  Out of jealousy, probably.  Out of darkness, surely.  She was relieved to discover the Force had other plans where Luke was concerned.

            As if on cue, a bizarre, painful sensation sparked to life within her.  **_Nausea.  A_** _g_ ** _ony.  Heat._**   Rey stared around, expecting Kylo to pop into sight. 

            He didn’t.

            It couldn't be the bond, could it?  Rey’s veins pulsed too closely beneath her skin.  Maybe he had torn his wounds open through his stubborn training-practice.  _Ben?_ Rey queried, over the force.

            There was no answer.

            Without hesitation, Rey lugged her canteen-filled knapsack over her shoulder and headed in the spark’s direction.  Its epicenter felt rooted on higher ground.  

            She picked her way through thinner, more-elevated trees, dappled by afternoon light.  Rey hadn’t explored this particular part of the jungle before — she doubled-back on the mossy path a few times, eyeballing a patch of red flowers she’d surely passed twice.  The calling pain flickered through her veins again, more dull this time. 

 _Where are_   ** _y_** _ou?_

            Nothing.  Blast him.

            Craggy rocks lined her path downhill, leading into a hollow between the trees.  There, Rey’s tracking came to an abrupt end.

            A pool filled with deep, blue-gray water, dotted with tall boulders, lay at the hollow’s base.  One spring-fed waterfall streamed into and over the pool’s sides, emptying into the branching creek beyond.  Steam formed a haze across the water.  

            It was a hot spring.  Her terraformed moon had a hot spring. 

            Why, exactly, Rey wondered for the millionth time, _had_ the old Empire altered this distant moon?  She’d figured it was meant for an outpost or vacation spot, but she now suspected it had been commissioned for questionable recreation.  For sport.  For a lark.  What frivolous, disgraceful wealth it must have taken to refashion an entire ecosystem like this!  Rose would be outraged.

            Outrage aside, Rey scrutinized the new scene.  The trickling cascade looked peaceful and beckoning, reawakening her old aquatic longings from Hoth-4.  She felt bisected: the scavenger-mechanic in her wondered how the terraformed spring worked, but the wizard-jailer in her needed to know what had become of Kylo. 

            The peculiar sensation no longer called to her.  The pulsing was gone.  Rey dropped her heavy knapsack onto the bank, recalibrating. 

            The sound of a throat being cleared rang out over the water.  

            Unexpected.  Unbidden.  

_Unbound._

            Practically jumping out of her skin, Rey sprang into an attack position on the bank.  “What – in -  _blazes?_ ” she shouted.

            A long, pale face peered at her over the top of a large boulder in the spring.  “I didn’t want to  _startle_  you,” the face rumbled back, just as loudly.

            “ _What’s wrong with you?_ ”  Rey stood straight up, utterly rigid.  “Are you training?  Are you hurt?”

            “No,” the face muttered, disappearing behind the boulder.

            Although Kylo was no longer in view, Rey’s ferocity only climbed higher.  “How are you blocking me out so easily?  Are you practicing how to sneak up on me?”

            “ _No_ ,” Kylo barked, unseen.

            Rey toed off her boots in an automatic frenzy.  He must be plotting something.  Mission be damned, she’d march over there, and she’d drown that wasteoid once and for all …  a neatly-folded pile of clothes on the bank almost tripped her.  Black clothes.  Boots too.  Rey froze.

            Kylo was naked. 

            Soaked. 

            Naked. 

            Hiding. 

 _Naked_. 

            At once, Rey understood exactly what she’d been feeling, strange and heated and aching enough to draw her here out of genuine concern.  Her connection to the bond — working again, and roiling wickedly — sent her a manifestation of Kylo.  Earlier.  In the spring.  His back leaned against the boulder.  His head arched backward.  His fingers slowly stroked the length of his hard, desperately frustrated cock, gradually getting faster with the urge, and the need, and the pulsing, and _oh g **ods, she was so a** ngry._

            “I don’t know why you’re upset,” Kylo began, still hidden from sight.  His tone was somehow both halting and imperious.

            One of Rey’s boots sailed over the boulder.  The projectile should have struck him easily, but it veered off at an angle and splashed into the water.  Kylo’s face reappeared, a hand aloft beside it.  His water-slicked hair couldn’t hide the shade of pink around his ears, nor could it shield his eyes, currently lit with provocation.  “Rey, what the —  _hell!_ ”   He swore as her other boot almost made contact with his head.  He force-shoved it, too, into the water.

            “I don't want you thinking about _me_ when you do that!” she thundered at him, recalling her soaked boots with the force.  They stomped footlessly onto the bank next to her.

            Kylo stared, for a moment, as if Rey had gone mad.  Gradually, his look narrowed.  Resolutely.  “When I do  _what?_ ”

            She rolled her eyes so hard that she feared they’d dislodge in her skull.  “You know perfectly well what.”

            He waited.  She got the impression that Kylo wanted to hear her say it.  Obviously, she didn’t, but her expression turned a little darker, a little more lethal.

            Kylo’s gaze never left hers.  “Don’t you do the same?”

            Her hand met her hip.  “I certainly do not.” 

            “You do.”  He didn’t bother to explain how he knew.  He didn’t have to.

            The implication of  _that_  infuriated Rey practically beyond comprehension.  “I don’t think about  _you!_ ”

            Kylo exhaled sharply.  Clearly, Rey didn’t need to throw anything in order to hit him.

            Fuming — and worse, feeling the lump-driven darkness regaining steam inside her — Rey retreated behind a large boulder of her own on the bank.  She slumped restlessly against it for a moment before deciding to make use of its positional-advantage; she climbed to the top in a series of irritated, reflexive motions.  Sitting in a lithe, agitated heap, Rey knew she’d solved another uncharted-moon mystery: this secluded spring must be how Kylo kept himself so clean before she’d repaired the refresher in his hut.  Bathing was an entirely different matter, however.  _How oft **en did he t** ouch himself like that, and did he alw **ays sense whe** n she —_

            “I don’t always sense it.”  Kylo’s low voice answered her fragmented thoughts.  “Just like you, obviously, don’t always sense me.”  He peered out at her again, sizing up Rey’s scavenger-perch.  “You’ve honestly never — ”

            “No,” Rey sputtered defiantly, cutting him off, “I’ve never thought about you while I’ve touched myself.”

            He paused.  “And you’ve never felt me before?  Not once?”

            “ _Should_  I have?”

            Kylo exhaled again, less sharply this time.  He disappeared momentarily, before the sloshing sounds of water gave away his intention to lumber into view.

            Rey gave a furious sort of squeak.  She spun around with her back to him. 

            The sloshing stopped briefly, then started again.  “I have to get my  _clothes_ ,” Kylo muttered acidly, as he went.

            “You’re a liar, you know,” Rey pointed out, her eyes fixed on the trees stretching into the distance.  “You said I could have control.  You said you could give me that.”

            The sloshing continued.  “I did say that.”

            “You didn’t mean it.”  Her shoulders stiffened.

            “I did.  It’s what you want.”  Kylo came to a halt in front of her boulder.

            Rey whisked her head around to glare at him, more incensed by his presumptuousness than by his nakedness.  The impression of reversal filled her memory — it was _Rey_ , this time, beside this particular hot spring, who had to command herself to look only at _Kylo’s_ face.

            Just there.  

            Nowhere else. 

            She handled the turnabout deftly, rebelliously, her gaze level and fixed.

            It turned out not to matter.  The water level of the hot spring came up to Kylo’s waist, basin-like, leaving the rest of his hulking form shrouded beneath the steamy, blue-gray pool.  Did he find this sodding situation funny?  Was he teasing her?  Rey’s gaze turned livid.  “You think it’s all right to pleasure yourself with the thought of me, over which I have no control?”

            “I haven’t touched you.”  Kylo tilted his neck to study her, his arms hanging at his sides.  Water dotted his face, his shoulders, his scars.  _Her_ scars.  A sense of conflicted, wound-spiking warmth radiated from him.

            “You’d like to, though,” Rey stated.

            He shifted.

            Rey huffed, leaning down slightly from the boulder.  “You expect me to believe that  _you_  can give me control, Kylo Ren?”

            His eyes challenged the level of hers.   ** _I looked at you back then.  Why don’t you look at me_**   _n **ow?**_  

            Rey’s dark, infuriated gaze locked onto his.  She grasped the rock and leaned down a little farther, testing him.  

            Kylo didn't flinch.  Didn’t breathe. 

            Rey breathed instead.  She leaned closer.  She pushed.

            His features rose with surprise, then deepened into confusion, as Rey’s lips pushed against his.  Suspicious, they kept their eyes glued to each other.  Their vision blurred into a formless, ridiculous, single-eyed creature before they recalled, as one, that their eyes ought to be closed.

            So they closed them. 

            In mutual darkness, the not-quite kiss became less firm, more puzzling.  Rey felt something stir against Kylo’s thigh, again.

 _Stop._ Her order echoed violently in the crooning force between them.  

            Kylo disengaged, leaning backward to stare at her roundly, mutely.

            Rey frowned, confused.   _Wait._

            He waited.

 _You’re naked._ Rey blinked.  

            Kylo made as if to turn away.   ** _I’ll get dres_** _se **d.**_

            The Force lulled Rey’s senses into a reflective comprehension.  Within it, she felt Kylo’s nerves, matching her own.  She knew Kylo sensed her testing him, just as she sensed him testing her.  The connection cascaded into their gray, mirrored depths as if his feelings were hers, and hers, his.  For the first time Rey realized exactly what a force-bond could offer two solitary, long-exploited opposites: it would tell them when it was too much, if he’d listen.  It could tell them what felt right, and what didn’t feel right, if she wanted it to.  It told her he’d been dying to try kissing her again.  It told him ... Rey’s realizations melted away as Kylo sloshed closer. 

            “What are you doing?” she began, but her question turned into another bristling squeak as Kylo lifted her down from the boulder, grunting with the slight strain it put on his persistent wounds.  He gave up, or gave in, and called on the force to complete the task.  “Ben — ” Rey got out, before the bond murmured between them, his chin tilting up, hers inclining down.  Her lips pressed against his, again.  

            Rey wasn’t sure she had chosen it willingly.  Kylo was sure that she had.  The Force kept its opinion to itself.

 _This won’t_   ** _work._**   ** _I want yo_** _u._

            Kylo nudged Rey’s lips apart with his.  She could feel the muscled length of his arms, clasping her high against his chest.  The water below saturated the legs of her trousers, the trailing ends of her tunic.  The water dotting Kylo’s body did the same.

 _This can’t wor **k.**_   ** _I want m_** _ore._

            Hesitantly, he put his tongue against hers.  Rey flinched, startled, before she fought back by meeting Kylo’s velvety tongue with her own.  Lightning shot through him, through her.  He’d burn up.  She’d burn down.  Time slipped away, forever, and her mouth moved against his as if she were bewitched.

            Her fingers curled against his face, moved down against his shoulders.  Her body shifted in his tightening grasp.

_Gods, Kyl **o, st** op._

            It took him longer to obey this time.  “You want me,” he murmured raggedly.  
  
            “Not all passing thoughts mean you should _listen_.”  Rey struggled, as she had _been_ struggling, to disentangle herself from Kylo’s hold without force-pushing him backward.    
  
            Brows furrowing, he set her down into the spring.  Rey stared numbly at the water ahead of her as she waded away from him toward the bank.

            Did Kylo know?  

            Had he seen?

            The Force had shown her too much.  Lip to lip, drenched skin to soaked fabric, the bond between them had compelled Rey toward an entire lifetime of fears and fantasies in Kylo’s head.  

            His family feared him.  The servant girl he kissed when he was young feared him too.  Old friends at Luke’s Jedi training-temple became old enemies, some vice-versa, before falling away to fear, to death.  Snoke promised him _triumph_ over fear — master of Kylo’s almost-every deed, Snoke was forever challenging, forever demanding, forever punishing him for any weakness.  Rey saw, relatedly, that Snoke had a habit of berating his apprentice whenever Kylo couldn’t hide his masturbatory self-management carefully enough.  **_I know your every thought, Kylo Ren.  You’re a weak, one-handed boy who can't control himself._**   Believing he could prevent a Palpatine-style downfall to an apprentice who had known the weakness of release, Snoke required Kylo to remain largely unsatisfied ... a feral brute kept on edge, somewhere between a self-denying, celibate Jedi and a self-serving, passion-preying Sith ... strength and power, restraint and pain, and never any attachment ...

            Cringing from these revelations, Rey looked upon Kylo’s fantasies instead.  Most of them involved dueling with her.  She always lost, and she always begged for him.  Others began with her defying him, only for her to wind up begging even more.  Some fantasies lay deeper down, drowning, where no one broke or fell or burned, and no one won or lost.  No pull.  No confusion.  Rey even consented to sleep next to him there, unafraid and untamed, flowers and monstrosity be damned.   
  
            One fantasy, the most-hidden, lingered beneath it all.  In it, Rey was made entirely of rage — Snoke-like, with lightning in her hands — challenging, demanding, defeating and punishing Kylo for his weaknesses and his sins.  It was what he knew, only better.  She owed him.  She belonged to him.  The moon burned red with triumph, escape, and ascendancy.  She was master, or he was master.  Two ruled the galaxy, yet the rule of two was extinct.  Or drummed out.  Or reborn.  
  
            By the _stars_ , he was so twisted up.  
  
            How could Rey ever possibly extract him from all that?  Was it her, or was it him, who truly craved control?  
  
            Rey could understand why Kylo had murdered Snoke, the cruel master who’d threatened them both.  She could even comprehend why Darth Vader had murdered Emperor Palpatine, the equally-cruel master who had threatened his son.  But Rey could not escape the question for which even Luke had no answer: why had Vader climbed _out_ of the darkness, while Kylo stayed _in?_  
  
            Heart drumming in her ears, Rey lunged out of the spring and sat dripping on the bank.  She longed to hide her face in her hands.

            Kylo watched her from the water.  He seemed to be waiting for something.  “Can I keep my teeth?”  

            “I don’t know yet,” Rey mumbled.  Kylo’s fantasies still whirled around inside of her, yet he didn’t know what she’d seen.  Perhaps Rey wasstronger with the Force than he was.  Perhaps the Force preferred it that way.

            “Why don’t you turn?”  Kylo’s voice sounded odd.  Was he ...  _pouting?_

            “Kissing you doesn’t mean I’ll turn to the dark side.”  Rey looked at him somewhat incredulously.  “Neither does ... anything else.”  Gods, how she hated the hitch in her voice.

            It was Kylo’s turn to wade forward now.  “I have to earn it, right?”

            “Ben, that’s  _not_  what I meant — ”

            He cut her off.  “You call me Ben when you’re pleading, when you’re wishing I was someone else.  You call me Kylo when it doesn’t work, or when you’re angry.”  His eyes flickered.  “Call me Kylo.”

            “I think I’ll call you whatever I like.”  The gathering darkness inside of Rey flickered into her  _own_  gaze.  “Ben Solo is who you are.”

            He huffed and waded closer.  “Can I earn it this way?”  

            “It’s not a transaction.”  She glowered at him, her heart pounding.

            “Isn’t it?”  Still waist-deep in the water, Kylo moved forward until Rey’s knees bumped against his stomach.

            She turned her face away.

            “How do I earn you?”  He leaned down toward her ear.

            This didn’t feel like the right strategy.  But what if it was?  “Don’t talk like that, for one thing,” she said, flatly.

            “You like when I talk,” Kylo informed her.  “You like my voice.”

 _Soddi **ng forc** e-bond_.  “Ben — ”

            “No.  Not him.”  Kylo waited by her ear, the warmth of his breath wafting a strange new headiness into Rey’s already-strange, already-heady senses.

            Was this it?  Was this how he came back to the light?  Lost, swirling, Rey scowled.  “You could start by not being a complete nerve-burner all the time.”   _You can kis **s me ther** e._

            His lips lowered to her earlobe a little too fast.   _Les **s.  More quie** tly.  _He changed course as directed, and Rey’s face shivered further away from him.  Kylo’s mouth twitched.  The trembling wrought in her by something so simple resonated clearly over their bond.

            Rey’s voice darkened.  “Start by renouncing the First Order.  Help us defeat them.”

            Kylo paused, his eyes narrowing, before he kissed her ear again.  He could sense how wet Rey was, far beneath her clinging, water-drenched clothes.  He also sensed that he’d better not point it out to her.  **_But wh_** _y no_ ** _t?_**   The Force had already indicated to Rey that he’d noticed, and he was deeply, infinitely curious about it.

            Hurriedly, Rey turned to kiss him, crushing her mouth to his.  A master would do that, she thought.  They’d demand it.  Kylo was more than willing to meet her tongue again — it felt less strange when he let her lead, before Kylo shocked her, anew, by twirling his tongue around hers in an experimental circle.  Rey made a noise.

            Pink heat returned to Kylo’s ears.  He broke away and stared at her as if she mocked him.   ** _Sh_** _e had **n’t.**_

            Strangely, almost testily, Rey’s fingers fisted on the bank. 

            “Repeat that.”  Kylo leaned down to make the noise return.

            Rey shoved him back a little with the force, stopping him.  Her eyes were dark and fixed.  “Come out into the light.”  

            He stared at her again.

            “I demand it.”  Something deep inside of her hissed.  “I know your every thought.  You can’t control yourself.”  

            Kylo blinked.  Several times.  

            At once, Rey felt small and wrong.  The echoes of Snoke’s phrasing barely moved Kylo at all — perhaps Ben had shoved his humiliation down so far inside of himself that he could no longer remember.  Like she had with her parents.  Like he had with the light.

            Rey felt, for the first time in her life, too much like a Sith.  And by the Force, by the gods, by R’iia herself, she could not go that way.  She was not Snoke.  She could not do that to Ben.  

            There had to be a better way.

            Rey scrambled to her feet.  Whatever spell the lump-like darkness wove within her felt broken, for now. 

            Kylo’s hands settled on the vacant bank.  Rey wasn’t looking at him, although her eyes were large and damp in the steam.  “You’re awfully manipulative for a Jedi,” he tried, in the hopeful echo of an earlier dig.   ** _Sto_** _p. **Give me your anger.** **Let me claim you.  
**_

            Rey heaved her knapsack into place.  She felt, somehow, that she had been tested, and insofar she had passed.  “I’ve told you, Ben, I’m not a Jedi.  Not quite.”

            “Rey,” he commanded.  “You can’t walk away from me now.”

            But she did.

            “Where are you going?  It’s an awfully small moon.”  More echoes.  No effect.  He seethed.

            She kept going, even when she heard Kylo’s old jungle-clearing roar behind her.  It was still his default operating mode.  He was still fighting.  Always fighting.  Rey knew the feeling.  

            At least he had learned not to chase her.

 

***

 

            After such a day, Rey welcomed the night’s windy, floral-scented regularity.  

            She spent the evening drying off inside her hut, walling up her thoughts, her wants, and especially her pity.  Eventually she sensed Kylo sulking inside of his own hut, similarly-walled.

            Regularity ensued.

            Her edges flickered blue, followed by the temporary switch-off of the bond.  Rey crept out of her hut.  The light from her glowrod pooled dimly beneath her cloak as she made her way into the jungle.

            In the center of a clearing, she took a seat on the usual wide, mossy stump.  “I don’t think this mission is right for me,” Rey ventured.  “Ben was supposed to change, or else we were supposed to learn how to cut the bond permanently.  We were supposed to stay hidden away, or else we were supposed to destroy each other.  I wasn’t supposed to … fall.”

            “That’s not what falling means.”  Luke’s soothing, ghostly figure, bordered in blue, stood next to Rey in the clearing.  “Ben does get to you, though.  That much is clear.  I feared it, on Ahch-To.”  He looked thoughtful.  “Did you ever tell Leia about your feelings?”

            “I don’t tell _anyone_ about my feelings.  Not anymore.”  Not after Ahch-To.  Not after the throne room.  Not after Ben had gone a different way.  Rey swallowed, thinking.  “I did tell Finn, once.  Finn knew almost everything.”  Her throat ached.  “Finn’s gone.”

            “An ancient Jedi would tell you to release yourself from your feelings.”  Luke recognized the compassion and anguish writ clearly over Rey’s features.  “I can’t do the same.”    
  
            Rey recognized that personal memories flooded her teacher, too, in ghostly, legendary pathways where she could not follow.  “You’re _not_ an ancient Jedi, Luke?”

            “Not quite!”  He laughed, the bark of it echoing in the night.  “There’s a little fellow you ought to meet someday.  You can talk to _him_ about age.  See how fast he topples you.”  Luke laughed again, straightening up.  “Do you want to talk about your feelings now, or would you prefer a distraction?”

            “Distraction, please.”  It was the easiest decision Rey had made all day.  She stood.

            Luke considered.  “How fast can you make that tree bend, over there?”

            “I thought the Jedi respected all life,” Rey said, reciting dutifully.

            “Humor me.”

            Rey scanned the enormous tree.  With a focused push, its trunk could be torn from its roots.  Its branches blew wildly in the night breeze.  Many gnarled arms … many unfurling leaves … one solid life, waving in the wind.  “It’s already bending,” Rey pointed out.  
  
            “You’re pretty smart for an old padawan.”  His eyes twinkled.  
  
            “That wasn’t a distraction,” Rey pointed out further, her nose wrinkling.  “That was just a terrible riddle.”

            “Hey,” Luke shrugged, “I didn’t say it would be a  _good_  distraction.”

            Rey giggled in spite of herself.  It was a release she desperately needed.

 _I think you were right before, Rey._ Luke’s voice floated rather suddenly over the force in her head.  A troubled mist formed over his blue, spectral eyes.   _We might need something bigger, something more balanced, to truly put the darkness in its place._

            Rey glanced up at her teacher questioningly, before a violent whirlwind swept her from her feet.    
  
            Her body flew backward.  One wrapped arm grazed the bark of a tree.  Pain scraped across her skin.  
  
            Gaspingly-fast, the whirlwind reversed.  She wrenched forward before dropping into a flowerbush near the base of Luke’s distraction-tree.  Staggering, Rey stumbled to her feet.  
  
            Kylo’s stricken face at the edge of the clearing told her everything.  His hand shook — raised, gloved, every finger splayed.  He hadn’t aimed for Rey, and he’d over-corrected his error by veering her into the underbrush like an unwieldy boot.  
  
            He’d aimed for Luke, standing beside her.    
  
            Luke, who had not moved, Crait-like.  Luke, whose edges glowed, just as Rey had glowed when she’d caged the Supreme Leader of the First Order in this isolated trap.  Kylo’s eyes shifted back and forth from Luke to Rey.  Rebuffed.  Betrayed.  Enraged.

            “ _I see you_ ,” Kylo railed.  The wind tore through the trees, whipping beneath his cloak, tearing through his hair.

            In the gloom, in the glow, Rey could not tell to which one of them Kylo referred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tiny-little-moodboard (TLM?) for this chapter can be found [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/172747765035/burn-the-boats-chapter-18-cascade).
> 
> Next chapter should be posted by Wednesday, April 25. 
> 
> Shout-out, again, to all my beautiful space-readers for coming along on this scribbleventure with me! I cherish all of your comments and questions, both here and on [Tumblr](http://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com)!


	19. Crosswind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am the Supreme Leader of the First Order,” Kylo thundered. “And you _are_ afraid of yourself. And you’ll bow to me, traitor, before this night is through.”

            Beneath the ringed, distant light of two smaller moons, three cloaked shapes stared at each other in the jungle clearing.  Wind volleyed against them.

            Rey put a hand to the sleeve of her rustling cape.  Thanks to Kylo’s attack, one of her linen arm-wraps had torn clean off across the bark of a tree.  A long scrape was already welting to red on the exposed skin below, and the unscavengable scraps of her former wrap fluttered among the flowers into which he’d dropped her.

            Kylo took an uneven breath.  “Rey — ”

            “ _Wasteoid!_ ” she shrieked, before unleashing a string of desert profanities no one else understood.  One sounded distinctly like Shyriiwook.

            “Rey,” Luke put in too, attempting to soothe the more easily-reachable jungle occupant.

            Kylo’s nostrils flared.  “I wasn’t aiming for you — ”

            “Does it matter?” she hollered.  "You aimed for _someone!_ ”

            “Of course it _matters_ , he — ” For a moment Rey observed the struggle going on across Kylo’s face as one might assess a set of haywire electrics. Shadows washed over the pale spill of his features in the moonlight. An unfamiliar battery short-circuited far beneath him, and he switched to back-up power: darkness, with which he blocked her out. No light. Rey’s assessment ended fruitlessly, dejectedly, without any satisfactory conclusion.

            How could she rewire a person?

            “I suppose _this_ is why you wouldn’t train with me.”  Kylo glowered at Luke’s new blue-bordered shade.  His former teacher’s hooded figure mocked him, threatened him, repolarizing Kylo’s oldest, darkest coils.  “I know what you’re doing,” Kylo scoffed at him, practically spitting with contempt.  “You’re blinking on-and-off this time; is force-projection more difficult now?  Have you gotten too _old_ for it?”

            “Everyone’s restless about age tonight.”  Luke’s voice was calm.  Too calm.

            Rey inspected her guide.  His cloaked form shone steadily to her.  “Ben,” she began, but as Kylo’s eyes whirled toward her, she remembered why she’d sworn so loudly at him.

            Kylo remembered something too, a little further back. In the hot spring he’d been so caught up in Rey’s scented spell that he’d been willing to ignore it. Renounce the Order, she’d said. Help _us_ defeat them, she’d cajoled. “ _This_ was your plan?” he demanded, dark back-up power fully engaged. “Keeping me here — laughing at me, with _Luke?_ ”

            Rey shook her head, her loose hair tumbling in the wind.  “No one’s laughing at you.  You knew I trapped you here.  You knew I chose to fight the Order this way.”

            “Not with him.  Your powers have grown in the Force.  I thought you might have absorbed them from me, or that you went to — ”  Kylo cut himself off, too enraged by broken theories to continue.  Rey sensed the rest: **_to my_** _mo **ther.**_

            Well, he wasn’t wrong about Leia’s help, nor was he wrong about Rey having siphoned some of her skills from him.  But oh, gods, it seemed they were back to _that_  again: after all this time, the dark forces lingering inside of Kylo Ren still longed to be attached — or partnered, or mastered — to Rey through their mutual wizardry.  So much for giving her control!  Rey threw up her hands.  “I don’t need a teacher, Ben.  I want a guide, and a friend.  Calm down.  Breathe.”

            Kylo boiled over with a strangled sound.  “That continues to be your trouble, doesn’t it?  Always craving a father and a friend.   _He_ didn’t want to teach you.  You came to _me_ before Crait; you know me.”  His reprimand struck somewhere between incredulousness and betrayal. “Then you declined my offer, and you let _him_ train you?"

            “Riia’s sodding shorts, Ben,” Rey fumed, “you’re hardly an expert on fathers, or friends, or the light side!”

            “You’re m — the same as me!” Kylo shouted.  “I was trying to help you!”

            “I am not!  You were not!” Rey shouted back, feeling both inane and blindingly-furious at the presence of the word he’d redirected: **_min_** _e._

            Luke’s barely-restrained chuff — as if he’d watched this sort of exchange before, or recalled a few of his own — didn’t help.

            “ _You’re awfully quiet!_ ”  Kylo wheeled on his uncle.  “I know you’re not really here.  What desolate rock are you on now?  Not Ahch-To.  I looked.”

            Luke stood without speaking, hands at his sides.  He seemed to look, once more, at the wreckage of something ancient.

            “SPEAK!” Kylo roiled at him.

            “Ben,” Rey said.  Her tone sank quietly as she studied him.  “He's not ... he’s not anywhere.  Not in particular, anyway.  Your uncle is dead.”

            Kylo snorted contemptuously.  “He will be.”

            An urge to touch Ben’s shoulder filled her. _Compassion. Condolence. Calm._ Jedi-emotions, for people who were not stones. “No, Ben. He’s rejoined the Force.” Didn’t he know? How much did the dark side keep from him?

            “So if you don’t mind, kid, I do have other places to be.”  Luke’s tone was careful, almost joking, but likewise compassionate in its own unearthly way.

            Swiftly, Kylo shot out into the clearing, staring around the breeze-flung trees that bordered it.  “Can’t face me?  TYPICAL!” he ranted into the sky.

            Rey’s forehead puckered.  Luke hadn’t moved, yet Kylo could no longer see him.  Her teacher’s ghostly form shot Rey a look from beneath his hood, and suddenly she understood.  For Kylo, Luke was flickering — because Kylo, himself, was flickering between the darkness and the light.

            Kylo had finally sensed Luke because there was enough light in him to see.  There had been a change.  Of a sort. There _was_ light in him after all.  Very little, but some.

            Could there be more?

            Rey suddenly fought her own knees to remain on her feet.  She fought for calm.  She fought to breathe.

            Kylo whirled to face her, only to return to fury as Luke winked back into his vision.  “You don’t  _look_ dead,” Kylo proclaimed, his massive fists reforming.  “Were you dead on Crait, too, or when you cut yourself off from the Force?  I know that’s how you’ve been hiding all these years.”

            “Ah, Ben.”  Luke sighed.  It was time.  He launched into the talk.  “My masters were strong with the Force, so strong that death could not prevent their connection to me.”  The clear, searching look of a farmboy pooled in his gaze.  “And when darkness struck them down, they returned stronger — to guide those who were left behind.”  His look turned older, wiser.  More fatherly.  “So I’ve done for Rey.  So I can do for you.  If you like.  It’s the way of all Jedi, every one.”

            Kylo leaned forward, the wind raging around him, within him.  “ _You were no loyal master to me!_ ”

            “I made mistakes, Ben.  Too many.  You know what it’s like; we both do.”

            “ _My_ master’s dead.  I destroyed him.  With her.”  Kylo jerked his head in Rey’s direction; she bristled at his implication.  “Can I expect this _‘guidance’_ from him too?”  Something lay dull and pinched on the monotone tide of Kylo’s question.  It was the tone of too many years gripped in a vise that would not release — trapped behind a door that would not open — drowned beneath a buoy that would not float.

            At the sense of it, Rey’s heart ached. _Be st **ill**_ , she told it. _**You ca** n’t._

            “You know the answer to that.”  Connected to the Force itself, Luke heard everything, from his drowning nephew’s question to the ache in Rey’s heart, as well as an infinite expanse of unbalanced choices.  “Our afterlife is unreachable for the darkness. The Sith could never release themselves enough to rejoin the Force.  There were a few echoes, perhaps.  The void made some cling to life.  But ultimately, they couldn’t return.  They can’t.  Not like this.”

            Rey could feel the dulled pinch inside of Kylo recoil, then rebound into rage.

            Luke stepped forward a little.  “Snoke’s gone, Ben.  He can’t whisper in your head any more.  The only voices there are your own — only the darkness itself calls you now.  Fight it.  You already do.  You already know how.”

            “I severed those voices when I struck Snoke down.  He was weak.  _He_ was weak.”  Kylo leaned forward again, his jaw rigid enough to crack teeth.  “I won’t replace him with _you._ ”

            A gentle, studied stillness gleamed across Luke’s form.  “I wasn’t the master you needed. Not completely, anyway.  I’m sorry for that, too.”

            Kylo’s face twisted — in hatred of cryptic masters, and of that damned stillness, and all of it, all over again.  “I remember Crait.  You won’t distract me this time.”  Slowly, almost dizzily, he turned, his eyes fixing on Rey.  “I know what I have to do.”

            Just as she’d struggled to root out the darkness, Rey sensed that Kylo was struggling to engulf the light.  What wouldn’t he do to remove the knife twisting inside of him?  What wouldn’t _she_ do, were the situation reversed?

            Kylo stepped through Luke’s transparent form.  The blue-bordered mist of his uncle dissolved around and then re-formed behind Kylo’s imposing figure.   ** _Air.  Insub_** _stan **tial air.**_   Kylo felt nothing.  He walked toward Rey — she who, like him, felt everything.  She who, unlike him, wanted to _pretend_ to feel nothing.

            Her fists clenched.  She stepped backward.

            At the sight of her doing so, Kylo let out a half-shuddering snarl.  Rey had that wild-flung look about her, from the time he’d first landed here — when she’d hidden from him in the jungle.  Her edges did not glow this time.  Only Luke’s did, behind them.

            “Don’t.”  Rey’s face burned.

            “Is _that_ all he taught you to do, when darkness is near?”  His chin jerked in Luke’s direction.

            “You won’t like the rest.”

             _Remember the fight, Rey,_ Luke sent both of them.  _The Force is with you.  Balanced._

            Rage rattled through the lowest reaches of Kylo’s throat.  He passed a hand over his forehead, fingers twitching violently, as if attempting to shove the feeling of his former teacher’s voice from his mind.

            Luke seemed to squeeze Rey’s shoulder before his presence faded away into the fickle mist of the Force. She couldn't keep confusion from invading her previously-stilled features. There was still so much Luke hadn’t told her, so much she hadn’t figured out. Why would he leave her with Ben — with Kylo — like this, now?

            He wouldn’t.

            Unless the fight, at the moment, was theirs.  Alone.

             _No one’s ever truly gone,_ Luke reminded her, just her, invisibly.  Not quite alone then.

            “I told you he’d let you down.”  Kylo moved through the shifting winds in the jungle clearing toward her.  Bitterness seemed to be his only weapon at the moment.  “Are you afraid to be alone with me, now that your secret chaperone’s abandoned you?”

            “He hasn’t abandoned me.  And I’m not afraid of you.”  Rey’s look was cool, but her heart was hammering.

            “Why is that?” His eyes glinted. “Because you’ve trapped me? Tricked me? Think you’ve stirred me up enough not to care?”

            “No,” said she.  “Because I'm not afraid of myself.  Because I know who you are, Ben Solo.”

            “I am the Supreme Leader of the First Order,” Kylo thundered.  “And you  _are_ afraid of yourself.  And you’ll bow to me, traitor, before this night is through.”

            “I see you consider the truce between us gone.” Her cloak fluttered in the wind, her hair a dark, unruly forest of its own. “You don’t negotiate well. Maybe it’s best that you’re stuck here.”

            Kylo halted before her in the dual-ringed moonlight.  Odd.  Odd to see a relatively unarmed giant, his eyes wild, his own hair wind-blown, blanch so visibly.  “Rey — it’s who I am.”

            “Liar. And I’m not a traitor.  I’m nothing; I’m no one.”  She stepped back into the shadow of the treeline.  One foot.  Then the other.

            He stepped forward, to stop her.

            “And here, on this moon?  You’re no one, too.”  She fled.

            He followed.  No peace.  Too little light.

            His longer stride kept him close on her heels at first.  But Rey was lighter, and faster.  She leapt over a boulder.  He rounded it.

            The creek proved difficult; Rey knew its shallower end while Kylo, distracted by the old pains sparking through him in the jolt of a sudden sprint, pounded too far out into its wider fathoms.  The deeper water splashed and slowed him down, giving Rey enough time to climb.

            Her cloak caught on a branch.  She tore it from her shoulders, leaving it.  On a high, wide bough among the dancing fronds, she waited, willing her heart to a standstill.

            It mattered little — the bond was resoundingly sharp and Kylo was beneath her tree in seconds, his boots crunching on the ground below. **_Your old master had his say. Now you and I are go_** _ing **to talk,**_ he heaved at her, over the force. Only the twinge of location and intensity of his words got through; their mutual blocks against each other were far too enraged to let in anything else.

            “Chasing - isn’t - talking,” Rey flung back, aloud.

            He paced.  “Stop running, then.”

            “ _Tch._ ”  She stared down at him from between the leaves.  “You can’t even say please.”

            He stopped pacing.  “Please.”

            Tensing at the word’s unexpected return, Rey forced herself to ignore him. She turned still and silent in the tree, the dark lump stirring back to life in the deepest reaches of her senses. If he would only go away — 

             ** _Meditati_** _n **g?**_  Kylo growled loudly.  “Your Jedi tricks won’t work this time.  Luke Skywalker’s not here to help you.”

             _That’s lucky._   Her eyes were two emotionless slits in the darkness.   _Now he doesn’t have to watch **me snuff his nep** hew out._

            Exhaling, Kylo twisted his hand through the air. The force crackled around Rey as she flew from the branch. Teeth grinding, she managed to right herself with a stomp to the ground. They tried again on the jungle floor, the crosswind of their mutual powers pushing against each other through the eternal sea of energy. Matched, shaking, the thread between them sizzled with electricity.

            There was no lightsaber on which to focus this time.

            A single thread of lightning bolted across the bond between them.  Kylo flew backward into the quaking underbrush.  Rey burst backward, opposite, into a tree.

            Her ears rang.  Brief pain stunned her, not just from the crosswind, or the lightning, or the tree, but from somewhere far, far deeper.  All the work of many isolated months had vanished in a flash of perceived betrayal.  Despite Luke’s encouragement, she was alone, even when she was _not_ alone — Rey recognized, now, that loneliness required neither sand nor space to exist.  Emptiness could exist here too.  At home.

            Ben had been so close to the light.  Rey had been so close to pushing him there.

            Hadn’t she?

            Hadn’t he?

            Hadn’t _they?_

            As Kylo stumbled out of the underbrush toward her, he sensed Rey’s eyes were brightened by tears. He faltered. His old wounds ached. He called upon every ounce of searing pain inside of him to close them up — cooling, soothing darkness swam into him — and he kept going. “Don’t do that.” He paused, again. “Please.”

            “Don’t do  _what?_ ” Rey yelped.  Sod it, now _she_ hated the word ‘please’ too.  “Don’t cry?  I’ll cry anytime I like, you stubborn, spaced snake!”  Despite her words, her tears receded.  Rey could draw power from her anger too; she always could.  But she did not linger, or wallow.  She loved the light too much.  

            She was more balanced.

            And Luke knew it.

            Maybe he had only imagined the tears, Kylo reasoned.  Rey must have conjured them up, to trick him.  For now, he drew himself up as high as he could go, wincing a bit, advancing on her in the shadows of the jungle.  “You will return my lightsaber,” he commanded.  “And you’ll build a subspace transceiver, or repair my ship.  One or the other.  You’re going to get us out of here, Rey.”

            “How exactly do you plan on making me do that?”  She was on her feet.

            Kylo paused.  The amorphous jungle elongated his silence, except for the leaves whirling overhead and underfoot. 

            “Haven’t thought it through, have you?  Well.  I have.”  Rey’s mouth was flat and grim as the dark lump roiled inside of her.  “What will you do, Ben?  Break and reset one of my bones every day?” 

            He looked sick.  He felt sick.  “Rey.  No.”

            “You could though, couldn’t you?” Her eyes were so deadly, so searing, that he found himself afraid — afraid, as with the lump she’d once been, that she’d never change back into the deeply-known substance of herself again. Not now. Not after she said something like that, or if she could even entertain the thought. “You’ve done that sort of thing before,” Rey added coldly. “What’s the difference?”

            Something like a despairing bark erupted from him.

            Might as well keep going.  Keep battling.  Keep fighting.  “And I may have kept Luke secret from you,” Rey went on, her eyes aflame, “but we’re alone.”

            “And?”  At the mention of Luke, Kylo wrenched himself forward again.

            “And,” she went on, backing up, yet embarking on the farthest option from retreat, “can’t you think of anything else you could do to me?  Every day?  Until I let you go?”

            Oh gods, her face.  “I wouldn’t — I — am above such base things.”  He reached for an old, automatic phrase, visibly cringing when he remembered it originated with Snoke, cringing further when he realized it was not entirely true.

            “Ben Solo,” Rey breathed, moving backwards all the while, “haven’t you got the stomach for a tyrant?”

            Kylo didn’t respond.  She felt her questions infuriate him, bewilder him, fill him with a strange, painful stab.   ** _Sh_** _am **e**_.  The light churned inside of him.

            “So you _do_ fight the darkness someti — ”  Rey broke off as her back bumped against a massive, moss-covered tree.  Sod it; this jungle had too many trees.  She pressed against the trunk reflexively, reorienting her clearly-fractured senses.  Her single unwrapped arm, scraped with red, looked pale against the cushioned expanse in the moonlight.

            “Your arm,” Kylo noted, with clearly-relieved haste.  Anything to distract from this knifing thing — this aching thing — this shame.  In an unfamiliar, weaponless battle, any scratch would do.  He squinted at Rey’s arm in the gloom; there was no ghost-light between them anymore.  “You’re hurt.”

            “Thanks to _you_.”  Rey pushed a fist against the moss behind her.  Meaning to go.  Not moving at all.

            Two black-pleated arms trapped her against the tree, well-back from the sides of her head, as Kylo scrutinized the skin of her wrap-free arm.  The scrape was hardly deep, and thus he found himself more distracted by the skin around it.  He’d seen Rey’s unwrapped arms only once, and  _that_ had been through their force-bond — and a flash of water, and a thick layer of steam, and a rush of righteous anger.  Never in person.  Never this close.  Horizontal sun-stripes danced across the length of her bare skin as if she’d painted it that way, forming a white, color-blocked pattern against a dusting of freckles.  Kylo realized, too late, that he was openly ogling her.

            Rey wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of darting away, not again.  But gods, the _strangest_ things seemed to heat Kylo’s gaze: a wrist, a hand, an arm.  She didn’t understand it.

             _Because it’s YO **UR** **wrist. YOUR hand. YO** UR arm,_ the bond informed her. Anything could be absorbingly studiable to him. Anything, so long as it was hers.

            “I put the scrape there.  I can heal it,” Kylo speculated, his tone hinting at a bargain.  “Like you healed me.  Would that be fair?”

            “ _That’s_ what you think I want? And _this_ is giving me control?” Her face hot, Rey took a long, steadying breath from within the tree-pinned circle of his arms. “Or do you only know how to deal with people when they’re strapped down?”

            “I don’t — _no_.”  Kylo’s voice shook, but his jaw clamped it back into obedience.  He rerouted, deciding to try his preliminary demands again.  “I rule the First Order, Rey.  You can’t keep me here.”

            “You forget,” she chided, “how you _got_ that promotion.”

            “It was my right.  I would have gotten it anyway.”  Kylo lied; his wavering features told her so.  The coup had required her help, in more ways than one.

            “No.  Your birthright was different.  _You_ were different.  You let Snoke in, let him twist you.  He’s dead.  Stop letting him.”  She could feel Kylo pressing at the corners of her mind, puzzling at the heat in her face and the wild swing of topics between them, trying to understand … to see … “This is what I’m talking about,” Rey protested.  “You keep pushing.”

            “You look in my head _all the time_ ,” Kylo snapped.  “You wanted to close the bond between us, or make me turn to the light.  ‘I know your every thought,’ remember?”  He  _had_ heard her in the hot spring.  “Which one of us is _really_ pushing?”

            “Both,” Rey whispered.  “We both are.  It’s an incredible mess, can’t you see?”

            A vein in his forehead pulsed.  “Damn it, Rey, you _kissed_ me — ”

            “To distract you,” she sputtered.  “To shut you up.”

            She lied; the light in her eyes told him so, as did the bond pointing him toward her flushed cheeks, her hammering heart, and her reeling, simmering center. “You think you can shut off the connection between us?” Kylo leaned down. “You think you can shove me out?” His lips grazed the corner of her mouth, which twisted with resolve.

            “I will.”  Rey jerked her face away.

            “You’ve marked me so deeply, you won’t be able to.”  He found her ear.  He remembered how carefully he ought to breathe into it.   ** _Du_** _el.  Le **t go.**_

            Her face pivoted back and her lips found his. She remembered how to make the light surge through his blood. _Dis **tract. Shu** tup._

            “I’m in there,” Kylo rasped, pulling back from her. Struggling for control, or rather, struggling to _cede_ control, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Like the map. You won’t give me away.”

             _Ban **di** t_, she sent.

             ** _Tra_** _ito **r,**_ he replied.

            She scowled, wresting her forehead from his.  _Tyr **an** t._

            He scowled back.  **_Thi_** _ef._

             _Ner **ve-burn** er._  Her lips parted.

             ** _Des_** _erte **r.**_  He watched closely.  He waited.

            Rey’s mouth was again furious and demanding as she kissed him now. Kylo’s hair felt mildly damp from the hot spring — or the creek — regardless, her hands were on it, in it, pulling. His tongue swirled with hers as they explored the confines of something that once meant strict prohibition for him and scornful, shrinking evasion for them both. The dark bulk of his body pressed down against Rey, making her feel every difficult, unreasonable, hard-headed inch of him.

            How _did_ you rewire a person?

            Her teeth sank slightly into Kylo’s bottom lip and he rumbled with surprise.  She hadn’t expected him to enjoy that — but of _course_ he did, Rey thought, fighting back a newly-consuming urge to roll her eyes.

            Instead, she tried kissing the breadth of his neck. It _was_  right there, after all, bending closely above her.  She knew she could mark it somehow, in return for her scrape; Jakku’s loutish, boastful drunks often complained that their conquests were too rough, leaving them with kissing-bruises.  Rey tested the reimbursement of her teeth on his neck.  Their bond reflected the bite back at her, infusing her _own_ neck with pain and the tips of her _own_ ears with heat.

            “Oww,” Kylo hissed.  “Why are you so fixated on _teeth?_ ”

            “Why are you so fixated on  _being the worst?_ ” she hissed back.  The bond, overloaded, carried two distinct heartbeats in its wake. It seemed that her experiment backfired; Kylo braced her higher against the tree to replicate her anger in full.

            Fortunately, Kylo’s replication involved more tongue than teeth. Unfortunately, his mouth settled exactly where Rey’s neck met her shoulder. A mossy whiff of flowers invaded his sleepless senses — and he surged ahead to reach it more easily, yanking the collar of her tunic off her shoulder.

            She gasped. The bond shifted. Her face scorched red. His scorched pink, and he retreated higher up, rethinking. His lips trailed more slowly down the length of her neck until he found himself back at the same defiant curve above her bare shoulder. After a brief, indecisive pause, Kylo sucked her skin into his mouth, leaving a mark of his own.

            Rey mewled with outrage. Dizziness, dark and prolonged and searching, whirled through every electron in her brain.

            “You _like_ this,” Kylo said somewhat breathlessly, lifting his head from her.

            “You’re vile,” Rey spat.  “You _and_ this sodding connection.”

            “You _expect_ me to be like this.” Wonderingly, he trailed a gloved hand down her bare arm, skipping over her scrape and sweeping further down her side. His touch was a little too brusque. Too investigatory. “You’re wet, Rey. You always are — ”

             _Don’ **t.  You.  D** are._

            “ — when you want me,” he concluded, blinking.  Obediently, he stilled his hand above the bone of her hip.

            Rey’s eyes flashed.  “It’s just a reaction.  It means nothing.”

            “And you know the darkness.  I feel that too."

            She stiffened against the tree.

            Kylo’s breath heated her skin as he studied her.  "Since you healed me in the meadow ... or was it before?  Yes.  Even before.  You hunger for it.”

            She felt him in her head.  How long had the bond allowed him to stand there, silently looking around?  What else had he seen?   _G **et ou** t,_ Rey ordered.

            He obliged. But whatever Kylo had seen made the blood ebb away from his brain, and his eyes went distant. Obscured. Greedy. “Luke doesn’t have to come between us. Become my apprentice, Rey.” His fingers curled at her hip, haltingly. “You don’t have to fight it, or prove it, or earn anything. That dark power can be yours. He can’t teach that to you. He must know that.”

            “Why do you keep asking me to join you?”  A blue-gray wall rose over the bond between them. Danger settled into the corners of Rey’s voice.

            It seemed her dulcet, dangerous tone did not translate — not if she was going to let him keep his fingers where they lay.  “If I claim you,” Kylo murmured, chasing the shadowy track of something he felt he understood, “you’ll stop fighting your true nature.  No more old masters.  No more resistance.  We’ll leave this rock, and I'll put everything back in Order.”

            It was amazing. Every sentence he’d just said was the exact opposite of what they both needed. Kylo kept doubling back into the dark wilderness of his own head. Rey slumped visibly, her eyes hidden beneath her hair.

            You couldn’t rewire a person.

            People had to rewire themselves.

            “I know what you feel, and what you want.”  The hand at her hip was deliberating on where to move, if the bond would let him.  “I’ll be a master you won’t have to hide, and you — ”

            “You’re right.  I do like this.”  The danger in her voice breached the shadow of Rey’s hair.  “It means I don’t have to hold  _back_.”  Every knuckle curved back from her open palm, and she rammed it directly above Kylo’s force-repaired wound.

            Roaring with pain, Kylo caught her hand with practically-visible adrenaline.  The bond screamed between them.  Rey twisted, grappling uselessly against his grip before her other hand summoned a branch from the tree above.  Under her command it bent down to repeat her gesture — a living, walloping weapon, it knocked the wind out of him as if lashing Kylo’s dark presumptions at the same time.  He staggered backward, gasping for air.

            Rey’s fury filled him, only it didn’t thrill him at all — or at least, not enough. Kylo sensed, now, that she wanted him, but not enough to share the thrill of the darkness. Not enough to drown in it, not like he had. Rey was stronger. She was resistance, personified. The sudden knowledge both chilled and split him, and as painful agony surged back into Kylo’s force-flung senses, he thought that he might pass out for the first time in months. Not that she’d care.

            Had she ever?

            Did it matter?

            “You can’t ask that of me.” Desire or no desire, Rey was entirely fed-up with having to make sweeping proclamations around her fellow prisoner. She wrested her tunic back into place over her shoulder. “I won’t be part of your revenge against the light.”

            Gulping for breath, Kylo’s dissent staggered over the bond between them. **_I am your des_** _tiny. I’v **e seen it. I’ve seen what you want.**_

            “ _I want Ben_.” Something clicked into place inside of her, clear and bright and true. “I don’t want Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.”

            He stared, reeling. The darkness informed him that Rey meant to run deeper into the jungle.

            She’d go where he could not follow, it whispered.

             ** _She doesn’t want you.  She doesn’t want us.  And she won’t come back,_** it keened.

            Kylo lunged forward.  “I’ll be damned if I let you run from me again,” he ground out, low in his throat, before force-pushing Rey into unconsciousness with a surging flick of his hand.

            She pitched backward lifelessly.  He stumbled as he caught her, drawing on every dark reserve he had ever known as he lifted her into his arms.

            At once, in a flash, Kylo felt small and wrong — or rather, monstrous and wrong.

            He almost dropped her. His nerves burned in a sudden sensory flood, as if one of Rey’s favorite insults had taken on a searing life of its own. The memory of ambushing her like this on Takodana seared into him too — back then, the pull of the light had been comparatively faint. Now, further split, Kylo felt cursed. Doom spread out before him in an invisible line of dueling forces he could neither quench nor escape, as the pale, shifting skulls of invisible ghosts assailed his control on the force. His perceptions coursed with Rey’s unconscious fury, her unshed tears, her bond-ringing hatred ... her detached coldness, her emotionless distance ... and her regulated, restrained, tremblingly dispassionate face. Kylo’s eyes watered, then narrowed.

             ** _How cou_** _ld it be?_

             ** _Ah._**

             ** _Of course._**

            Luke’s hooded figure stood at a glowing, vengeful distance through the trees — a flickering silhouette, bordered in blue.

            Kylo snarled. Drawing from his pain, his wrongness, his monstrousness, he shuttered his newly-screaming wounds. He grasped hold of Rey more tightly. Bleary-eyed, he stared down Luke’s projection in the illuminated darkness. “I was never good enough for you, Skywalker. But I’ll make your last student my apprentice. You can’t stop me.” He said it to Luke. To Rey. To Ben. To himself. Turning his back on his incorporeal uncle, Kylo barged off through the jungle tempest.

            Unyielding trees stood at grim attention in the pitch-black void. Kylo marched through them, ahead of them. Hanging vines caught his cape in the wind — rough, quailing fingers, long-tormented, drifted uselessly against him. Hidden creatures thrummed as Rey’s limp body scalded his arms. His jaw set. His mind raced.

            Reddish-purple vapors writhed into his vision, while golden apparitions chattered at him from the shadows.  He saw bones.  Jaws.  Teeth.  Kylo choked back a sneer.  He’d seen them before.  He’d seen them forever.  Luke would have to do better than that.

            They were deep in the undergrowth now.  Rey had left her glowrod back at the clearing; even if it had been clipped to her belt, Kylo wouldn’t have let go of her to get it.  The distant moons, slipping behind and before the trees, would have to light the way.  Their huts couldn’t be far off.  He mapped out the path to the meadow in his mind — earlier, drawn by the feeling of his uncle’s resurfaced presence, Kylo had followed Rey all the way from the builder’s huts to the clearing.  Her pathfinding had rubbed off on him, yet she didn’t know how to intentionally shut herself away temporarily from the Force quite like he did.  Luke hadn’t showed her that.  Kylo snorted; his uncle would _never_ consent to showing someone as powerful as Rey anything of real value.

            He could change that. Maybe she’d like it. Maybe she’d forgive him. He _had_ tried to earn her, a little ... no matter. In time, Rey would stop fighting herself. She’d see where she truly belonged.

            A blue, otherworldly glow reflected off the foliage on both sides of the jungle around him. Kylo half-turned to see Luke trailing behind. His diaphanous figure followed at an evaluating distance, his cloaked step moving noiselessly along the ground. Grunting derisively, Kylo readjusted Rey against him and surged ahead.

            The bizarre hike went on for some time.  Kylo trudged through the darkness, making slow, encumbered progress in the furious crosswinds, and Luke’s hooded figure followed, well-back.  When Kylo stopped, Luke stopped.  When Kylo advanced, Luke advanced.

            It was, in a word, infuriating.

            “I’m going to find a way to _end you_ , old man,” Kylo seethed into the night, his eyes grazing the sky in what felt like a Rey-imitative roll.  “Projection or ghost, you can’t go on forever.”

            Luke didn’t respond.  He kept walking, his gleaming edges lighting the way forward and backward as the three of them passed through the gloom.

            Kylo gritted his teeth.   ** _Foc_** _u **s.**_  He concentrated on walling-up the alarms blaring in his broad, burning chest, against which Rey never stirred.  If he could ignore his body’s treacherous response to _this_ , all over again, he could easily ignore an apparition.  He’d done it before.  Tuning out the daily influx of a presence in one’s head, stitching everything into a dark muddle of electrical feedback, had once been second nature to him.  A ghost must be similar.  The first few months without Snoke — without that feedback — had been a raw, noiseless desert.  Kylo had barely survived that desert, without Rey.  Surely he could survive _this_ desert, too, where the noise was bound up in the light instead, when she was still his.  Of a sort.

            At last, the hut-strewn meadow came into view.  Firelight from their opposing shelters gleamed through the darkness.  Although his hut was closer, Kylo steeled his depleting reserves and struck out for Rey’s with a mutinous lurch.

            He paused briefly at her door before nudging and then kicking it open.  Inside, rows upon rows of Rey’s scavenged inventions caught the low-sputtering firelight.  Their distorted, enormous shadows flickered over the ancient walls — warning him, telling him to keep out, that he had done everything wrong, forever, that he didn’t belong here, not like this.  Kylo glared at them. He’d  _make_ Rey build a subspace transceiver. And he wouldn’t do it the way _she_ suggested he would. He’d figure something out.

            From the open door, he saw Luke’s blue glow proceeding slowly across the meadow. It seemed his haunting could not be deterred.

            Growling with frustration, with strain, with near-giddy hysteria, Kylo kicked the _real_ door he’d been longing to kick: the one leading to Rey’s bedchamber.  Her peculiarly-massive collection of island flowers still lined the room, filling it with scent and reproach and heady, bewildering desire.  In his haste to place Rey securely on her bed, Kylo knocked one of her containers over.  Water spilled across the floor.  His face turned oddly downward at the sight of it.

             ** _Bru_** _te._

            Jaw working back and forth, he drew himself up. She wasn’t lumped under a blanket this time. For a brief, selfish moment Kylo gazed down at her. One arm exposed, she breathed softly, steadily. Did she dream? He shifted on his feet; he’d wait outside. Rey couldn’t be mad at him for that.

             ** _F_** _ool._

            A round bruise was already forming at the curve of her neck.  He could heal it.  She’d be _endlessly_ mad about that.

            “From my point of view, yours is a poorly thought-out plan.”  Luke’s hooded shape filled the entrance of Rey’s hut.

            “GO AWAY!” The violence of Kylo’s bellow rattled every metallic item in Rey’s hut. “She doesn’t need _you_ ; no one needs _you!_ I won’t touch her. I won’t hide anything from her, either, or sneak up on her in the night.”

            “You’ve done most of that already.” Luke’s quiet voice sounded mildly unsteady.

            Another bellow rang out, indecipherable this time, as Kylo moved into the main chamber. There _must_ be a way to turn off a ghost-projection. He peered at his uncle’s silhouette hatefully. Hanging back in the doorway, Luke made a transparent reflection of Kylo’s first invitation into Rey’s hut. He didn’t remove his hood. His stance was rigid.

            Kylo peered harder.

            The figure flickered.  “This is not what I hoped to find when I looked upon you with my own eyes.”  A sense of gawky limbs as replacements for ones taken long ago radiated from its spectral borders.

            Kylo’s mouth fell open as his senses finally pierced the distortion of his wounds.  He dropped to his knees.

            Undulating between the shadows and the light, something round, metallic, and scarred cycled briefly over the chiseled face beneath the hood. As Kylo knelt, the ghost reached out to touch the top of the young man’s dark, windblown head. Incredibly, the gossamer hand had weight — it felt substantive yet temporary, like Rey’s had long ago in their bond.

            A tremble chased over Kylo’s chin.  He _was_ cursed — or did he dream?  Had Rey opened the floodgates to every ghost in the galaxy?   ** _Luke said those in darkness co_** _uld not retu **rn ... but Luke understood nothing.**_   Kylo bowed his head beneath the dominant, avenging hand, his features assuming the old expressionless penitence.  “I was never strong enough to follow your example.  Forgive me.”  He swallowed as his eyes rooted to the floor, awaiting the testing, punishing pain of the Sith.

            He knew it would be far worse than anything Snoke had ever sent. Anakin Skywalker had been the corruption, while Darth Vader had been the true power. Snoke had said so. Snoke was dead, but he’d hardly ever been wrong. **_Perhaps Snoke had summoned Vader to enact his vengeance in the night, thr_** _ough the tr **ees … perhaps Snoke wasn’t truly gone, either …**_ Kylo’s gaze dulled into a thousand-parsec stare on the floor.

            No longer gawky but unfurling, instead, like five independent machines, the ghostly fingers ruffled Kylo’s hair.  Almost softly.  Almost shyly.

            Streaked with firelight, Kylo’s eyes grew impossibly wide.

            “Headstrong, foolish boy.” The fingers kept ruffling. Vader exhaled, but Anakin sighed — both, then one. Just one.

            The latter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mini-moodboard for this chapter is [yonder](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/173275515140/burn-the-boats-chapter-19-crosswind).
> 
> Next update/episode should be up by Monday, ~~May 7~~ , May 14. I'm so sorry for the delay! Life looms largely with too many deadlines and retooling-needs of late. :( 
> 
> As usual, I'll be sporadically-around [Tumblr](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com) and the comments here, as is my wily, brainstorm-y way. Do stop by and say hello/ask me anything/shimmer with glorious tomfoolery, space-kittens!


	20. Core

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She — I — she ran away from me.” Kylo halted, scowling at a large puddle before him in the darkness.
> 
> The elder Jedi’s hand flopped down to his side. “She seems to do that a lot.”

            Nothing worked.

            Rey’s hands refused to lift. Her feet failed to move.

            Nevertheless, her senses kept going.

            Finn told her, once, that at times he felt himself lying outside of his own mangled body in the Resistance medical bay — immobile, entombed, hearing filmy echoes ricochet between dreamspace and persons passing. That must be what this was. By the _stars_ , Rey didn’t like it much.

            On Takodana, she simply blacked out until she woke on Starkiller Base. What was different this time? Perhaps she had grown stronger in the light. Perhaps the darkness she’d absorbed prevented Kylo’s technique from taking hold completely. Perhaps she was too furious with him to be put off so soundly, or perhaps they were simply doomed to keep fighting, forever. Perhaps everyone was.

            Despite her frozen body, Rey’s mind positively _thrashed_. Wind surrounded her, bordered by warmth and some sort of pounding, until the swift-moving gale became a flock of birds, flapping feathers unseen. A blinding dizziness shifted into a formless, whispering throng — where, between gossamer-billowing wings, whispers became words.

             _It will be tricky._ One of the birds whispered resonantly, ringed with purple light. _Perhaps Obi-Wan should have gone. He’s had more experience with guidance than any of us._

            A smaller, pale-green bird hummed, ruminating. _Know him they do not. Connection they seek; the best path this is._

             _It’s harder for Master Anakin,_ pointed out another bird-whisper, more melodious than the others. _It’s different. That’s probably for the best._

             _I think he welcomes the challenge._ Rey registered a bracingly-warm voice, hardly whispering at all, forming accented vowels much like her own. _Remember, we don’t deal in absolutes here._

             _She hears us._ Luke’s voice drifted from the throng, quietly amused.

            The accented bird sounded equally-amused. _She won’t remember, will she?_

             _I WI **LL reme** mber,_ Rey tried to fling out, tethered between the gleaming void and some sort of floral-scented softness at her back. Her mildly-insulted feelings did not form physical words. _I rememb **er too much. I try to fo** rget._

            The pale-green bird drew closer. _A ghost of its own, memory is. Linger it does._

            Rey felt her brows knit. At least one motion obeyed her commands here. _I do **n’t understand an** y of this._

             _Nobody does,_ Luke replied. _Can’t I send her something kind, Master?_

             _Oh, Skywalkers. Forever with your hearts pinned to the horizons of your sleeves._ The green bird chortled. _Yes, send her on you should._

            As the gossamer wings stirred, buoying her into a deeper, less-dawning dreamstate, a crescendo of burbling, childlike laughter echoed in the distance — so balanced, so at peace, that Rey almost turned back in a sudden rush of want. Belonging. Home.

            They weren’t birds. They were shades in capes, like Luke. Voluminous, shimmering ghosts.

             _Not yet, padawan,_ Luke consoled her. _You’ve got a lifetime to go._

 

***

 

             _Clink. Tap. Clink._

            The creases on Kylo’s forehead deepened.

            This was not the Vader he expected. Most of the information left over from the Empire had to do with Darth Vader’s exploits during the war; hardly any material remained about the man who came before him. Kylo knew, of course, that his grandfather had been a Jedi before his rise to true power. And — once his mother had been forced to tell him the truth — Kylo _had_ found out about his grandfather’s secret wife. Long ago, he’d tracked down a sputtering, data-disfigured hologram that he hardly believed, even now: that of a padawan and the woman with whom he’d been obsessed, so young, standing solemn and still like figures in a costumed HoloNet production.

            The figure who currently shared physical space with Kylo was no war machine. No dark-powered threat. No Sith Lord. Instead, he looked like the spectral substance of mere flesh and blood, much like Luke had looked with Rey in the jungle clearing. Kylo scowled at the mental comparison. Luke Skywalker. Anakin Skywalker. Similar, not only in name.

            The thought seemed unacceptable.

            Impossible.

             _Clink. Tap._

            Anakin’s unacceptable, impossible, transparent shape moved lightly, carefully, seeming to float over the floor within the confines of Rey’s hut. No longer ruffling Kylo’s hair, his weighted, ghostly fingers brushed, then tapped against the cluttered assembly of Rey’s scavenged inventions. “I like her,” declared the preposterous form.

            An almost-foreign sensation flooded Kylo: pride, toward someone else. He blinked. “I read everything I could about you — ”

            “She takes things apart,” the blue-bordered illusion cut him off, seeming genuinely amused by something unknown. “Builds new objects from the old.”

            “Yes.” Kylo shifted on the floor where he knelt. Try as he might, he couldn’t see into the thought-flown void of this particular vision. “She learned on Jakku, as a scavenger.”

            “Is that so?” The ghost chuffed softly, as if there were more to the story. “The Jakku desert. One sympathizes.” He turned to face the young man on the floor. “ _You’re_ no scavenger. Tell me, why were you carrying her through the jungle like scrap?”

            Rubbing his aching arms, Kylo felt suddenly desperate to change the subject. “She — she wouldn’t listen.”

            “ _She_ wouldn’t listen?” Anakin stood straight and still beside the rows of Rey’s materials. “You can’t take a girl apart.”

            Warily, giving up on pressing into a mind wholly unavailable to him, Kylo examined the face beneath the hood. If he squinted, he could see something similar about the high brow, or along the full, inexpressive mouth. _**Fa** mi **ly.** _ For once Kylo did not grimace at the thought, although he still struggled for comprehension. “ _You_ followed me through the jungle? Why didn’t you speak?”

            “I no longer move at high speed. And I — don’t often leave.” A shadow crossed Anakin’s features. _Pain. Penance._

             _Shame._

            Sensing the all-too-parallel fluctuations at the ghost’s core, Kylo passed a hand over his eyes. “This isn’t happening.” _**Somehow, this is Luke’s fa** ult. Rey’s faul **t. Snoke’s fault.**_ The vacancy left by terminating Snoke’s feedback must have left Kylo’s senses amiss, deep inside. Maybe Rey’s innermost grumblings over the past few months were right; maybe he _was_ like a malfunctioning droid, after all.

            “ _Something’s_ happening.” Anakin fixed a durasteel gaze upon his grandson. “You’re not the Supreme Leader you should be. You want more, and you know you shouldn’t.”

            Kylo’s eyelid twitched as he rose to his feet. “How can I be Supreme Leader when I’m trapped here?” Wind railed against the hut, wending through the open door. Rey’s wired oddments twisted to and fro.

             _ **She tak** es thi **ngs apart.**_

            A tingling sensation pierced the back of Kylo’s mind. Shooting a glance toward Rey’s bedchamber, he lumbered out of the hut as if in a dream.

            Anakin sighed heavily. _Next move, then._

            Kylo rustled into the dark, wind-tossed meadow. The terraformed moon’s cyclical rain began to fall, albeit lightly, pattering onto his considerable frame.

             _ **There.**_

            Somewhere between the gathering storm, or his debilitated awareness, or his impossible grandfather, Kylo finally heard the call of his stolen lightsaber.

            Technically, he heard _hers_ — no — _his_ , Kylo corrected himself, jaw clenching as he did so. His grandfather’s lightsaber crooned at the corners of his bone-weary, pain-streaked realization. Somehow, it sounded different.

            It stuttered. In pieces.

            Pieces, scattered all over the island.

            “You’re too exhausted to gather all those fragments now.” Anakin stood behind him, undisturbed by rain and unruffled by grinding jaws.

            “She took them _apart!_ “ Kylo bellowed, already tramping across the fast-muddying ground. Rey must have disassembled both weapons before she hid them; the nearest portion of a fractured crystal thrummed in the jungle, under the earth. Buried? He didn’t put it past her. “ _Thief!_ “ he snarled, supplementing his previous bellow. If the unearthly projection behind him was _truly_ his grandfather, he would understand the insult, the insolence, the blatant disregard for — 

            “It wasn’t just her. My son had some influence in moving them, and in keeping them hidden from you.”

            “I’m sure he _did!_ ” Kylo was still on the move, rain be damned.

            “As did I.”

            Beneath the riot of cloud-shrouded stars, Kylo came to a standstill. “How? Why?” He turned to glower at the figure standing across the meadow.

            “The Force felt you shouldn’t have them. I am part of that Force. It does work in mysterious ways.” Anakin seemed to look right through him. “Or did you think it mere chance that Snoke didn’t feel the saber turn in his own throne room?”

            Kylo’s mouth dropped open. “I — I hid it.”

            “You did. But your powers were not the only ingredient.” The depths of Anakin’s voice had a halting, lilting quality, as if he was still unused to speaking on his own. “That lightsaber still answers to me, and to my master before me. It answers to the Force, to the light. It still sings or hides, or turns, according to the call of the light.”

            “What’s different now?” Kylo closed his mouth, blinking rapidly. “Why do I need them back now?”

            “That will become clear in time.”

            “Are you here to guide me?” A disbelieving, guarded thrill shaded Kylo’s tone. “To train me?”

            “It seems I am here to talk.” The figure fell silent for a few drenching beats. “I have to admit, I wasn’t the first choice for that.”

            All the frustrated failures of Kylo’s seemingly-unending day exploded from within him. “I don’t want to _talk!_ I want to _escape!_ ” Flinging one last backward glance at Rey’s hut, he struck out for the saber-summons in the jungle.

            Hidden night-creatures had resumed their usual creaks and croaks. As Kylo pressed between the pitch-black, reaching trees, a blue glow illuminated the underbrush around him once more. Inescapable. Impossible. A wordless growl rolled uselessly from Kylo’s throat.

            “Am I not what you expected?” Anakin inquired, softly.

            Kylo snorted as he tugged a saturated frond aside. “You certainly aren’t!”

            “Ah. You expected the greatest dark sorcerer in the galaxy?”

            “Yes, I did!” Another frond fell, all too easily-trampled beneath Kylo’s wet boots.

            “Who told you to expect that, young one?”

            “ _My master!_ ” Kylo’s roar echoed through the jungle, bringing the creaking and croaking to its second looming silence of the night. Comprehension writ large over Kylo’s twisting features: he had no master, and he gloried in Snoke’s death, and yet.

            And yet.

            A master’s memory lingered.

            Anakin swept his hood down. Despite the downpour, his light, curling hair neither dampened nor stirred. His face was young, but old. Chiseled, but scarred.

             _Family._

            “I know what it is to be someone’s prize.” Machinery curled over Anakin’s scarred face in the scattered play of rain and moonlight; Kylo blinked, squinting, and the image seemed to dissipate. “Rigged up, some kind of spectacle for how far you’ve fallen.” The elder Jedi scanned Kylo’s attire — although faded by sun and sea, it remained black and foreboding, a kind of mocking machinery of its own. “They even use the same tailor.”

            A huff interrupted Kylo’s squinting scrutiny. “ _I_ ordered these.”

            “The homage hasn’t gone unnoticed.” Anakin’s lips quirked slightly at the edges. “Didn’t you wear a mask as well?”

            “I did.” Kylo glowered at the jungle floor.

            “Who told you to wear it? What became of it?”

            “What became of your _hand?_ ” Kylo grumbled, sulkily, yet his features twitched faster than ever. Snoke _had_ often expressed triumph about turning a Skywalker; it seemed to be his greatest satisfaction and his most-searing ammunition. Kylo understood all too well that he never measured up to Darth Vader’s power — too much Vader in him for the light side, not enough Vader in him for the dark side, over and over, and back again. He grunted. “You’re trying to distract me. You — you ought to know, more than anyone, the true power of the dark side. It requires control. Control I will have, _do_ have, when I get back to the First Order. Help me find these stolen fragments, grandfather. They belong to me. You must know it.”

            Anakin moved closer. “I know far too well what power-hungry men can _do_ with the dark side, young one.”

            “That was the Sith, and the old Emperor. Not the dark side itself,” Kylo protested. “I can shape things differently. Make things right.”

            “The dark side wove fear in me, and then offered my greatest desire: to _dispel_ that fear.” Anakin came to a stop beside a vast, mossy tree. “Think, young one. What did your master offer you?”

            Kylo swallowed, then scowled. “The same.”

            “And what was your fear? It helps to say.”

            “I fear _nothing,_ ” Kylo blurted, imperiously.

            “I’m deeply sorry.” Anakin’s ghostly lips quirked again. “Long ago, then, what did you fear?”

            Crooning, luring, the nearest lightsaber fragment awaited Kylo’s answer as though it longed to get to the very core of him. “Legacy,” he muttered. “Weakness,” he added. “Monstrosity.” His voice turned hollow. “It’s all true. But I’m not afraid. I’ve moved on.”

            “Have you?”

            “I have.” It was almost a snap. “I’ll do what Snoke could not. I’ll rule the galaxy the way you wanted, grandfather. My — Luke told us, at the temple — he said that Lord Vader offered him all the power of the dark side, once. He said he turned it down. He was a fool; I won’t be.”

            Two vast, black, haunted circles flickered through the rain. “You _must_ change course, Ben. Don’t go that way.”

            Kylo’s features contorted. “You sound like _her._ ”

            “Like Rey? The girl you carried off like scrap, because she wouldn’t listen to you? Then she is smarter than I,” Anakin reasoned. “And still alive. And a real guide for you, if you can find the courage to face the light again.”

            “You — you don’t understand. Rey already has darkness within her.” Kylo leaned forward. “She can learn to work with me. I can teach her more about her powers than Luke can. I’ll make her stronger.”

            “In other words,” Anakin’s tone lowered, “you’ll make her a kind of prize.”

            Kylo stared.

            “Will you encase her in a machine? Drown her in fear?” In the thrum of Anakin’s voice, the vision became clear: Rey, dark. Not herself. Exciting in Kylo’s wildest fantasies, perhaps, but all wrong in her own reality. Like the lump, only worse. Silent. Deserted. Cold. No compassion. No attachment. No light.

            Like his master had made him.

            “The Sith had one thing right: it is on us, the fallen, to see that we surpass our masters,” Anakin avowed, gently. “But we only surpass them by becoming what they were not.”

 

***

 

            “Did you ever wonder why there were less women among the Jedi?”

            Rey blinked at the back of General Organa’s voluminously-draped coat. This was a dream; Luke _had_ offered a kindness she longed to see. “Yes,” Rey agreed, relieved to hear her own voice working even if it required a dreamstate to do so. “I _have_ wondered that.”

            Hyperspace streaked along outside the window of the General’s dreamquarters. “A woman’s powers in the Force often seem greater, don’t you think?” Leia tilted her head sideways. “Faster, somehow, and more flexible. Harder to predict.”

            Rey remembered Finn and Poe’s oft-repeated legend of Leia floating through space, wizard-like, right back into a starship’s wreckage. She was a survivor, like Rey. And Rey remembered, too, after Crait, the many secret training-sessions she’d had between Luke’s ghostly guidance and Leia’s pleasantly-exasperated presence — Leia acted as her live, relatively-untrained guide, stronger in the Force than either of them ever knew. A renewed pang of loneliness sliced through Rey’s senses. “Well, I’ve heard it _said_ that women often become better Jedi.”

            “Why do you think that is?” Leia faced her, smiling.

            “Because ... we can create life? Because creation lies within us?” Rey ventured.

            “That’s a good theory. But not all women do that, and they’re no less powerful.”

            Rey’s thoughts flew to Unkar Plutt, and then to Snoke, both of whom completely dismissed her as a mere girl. She thought of Kylo, who quickly learned _never_ to dismiss her, although gods only knew what he was trying to accomplish _now._ She considered Luke and Han Solo, both of whom dismissed her at first, albeit out of desolation. It was _Leia_ who had never dismissed her in the first place. “Because,” Rey deduced, quietly, “we are often overlooked.”

            “I think so. Because we’re too often thought less, when we are more. Much more.” Leia’s smile turned into a grin. “That’s why you’re right for this mission, Rey. You survive. And you’ll resurface.”

            All at once, the thread of Rey’s force-bond appeared before her — a dizzy, gray rope, one she still could not untie. Here, now, unthinking, she grasped it, and began to climb out of the dream.

            “I know my son will resurface too,” Leia said, looking up at Rey. She seemed to be holding back some sort of information that wasn’t hers to give. “It may not go the way we think. Nothing ever does.”

             _What if I can’t remember this dream?_ Rey puffed, climbing onward, upward. She felt lighter, somehow, and refocused, as if she’d found the equipment she was looking for.

            “The feeling will stay with you,” Leia proclaimed. “Always.”

             _Always,_ Luke added, from some ever-invisible place.

            Fighting for breath, Rey popped awake. Her swirling senses registered the heady scent of flowers ... the pounding of rain on her own domed roof ... and the low crackling of firelight, filtering more widely than usual beyond a bedchamber door that had been kicked off its hinges.

 

***

 

            Kylo’s head snapped in the direction of the hut-strewn meadow. _**R** e **y.**_ He started forward, then stopped. His fists balled at his sides.

             _ **Ever th** e brute. Ever t **he fool.**_

             _ **It doesn’t matter,**_ cautioned the darkness. Deeper within the jungle, the disassembled lightsaber fragments beckoned him. So many. So near.

            Kylo half-expected the ghost to say something. To direct him. To stop him. On Anakin’s face, however, there was only the calm, expressionless look of an all-too familiar mask that was no longer there.

            The rain poured down. Thunder rolled in the distance.

            Exhaling, Kylo began lurching back toward the meadow, his boots squelching over the saturated terrain. His fists did not relax.

            Anakin seemed to take the duel waging within his grandson in stride. “I fear the light won’t be easy for you, young one. But you are strong enough to cope. You are the only one who is — you and another.” His edges shone ever more unavoidably through the jungle downpour. “She is strong. I feel it.” A sudden sense of pride and regret exuded from him. “As is my daughter. And my son.”

            Kylo’s fists clenched harder. “I’m stronger than _Luke!_ ”

            “No, Ben.” Anakin said it so simply. “You aren’t. Not quite yet.”

            Another huff exploded from Kylo’s depths, so loudly it sounded like steam. “He wanted to kill me, grandfather. _Rey_ wants to kill me.”

            “Are you sure about that?”

            “She imprisoned me here.” Kylo shoved a sopping vine out of the way. _**Damn it, you’d th** ink you were *her* gra **ndfather!**_

            “Ah.” Anakin studied him, seemingly wondering how drenched his grandson planned to become on his way out of the underbrush. He put out a ghostly hand, palm upward — testing the rain. Real rain. It landed softly on the gossamer, still-weighted appendage. “How did she get you here?”

            “She — I — she ran away from me.” Kylo halted, scowling at a large puddle before him in the darkness.

            The elder Jedi’s hand flopped down to his side. “She seems to do that a lot.”

            “I saw her in our force-bond, more clearly than ever before, when she encountered an asteroid field. I thought she was hurt, or dead. Nearly-dead, anyway.” Kylo’s scowl deepened. “She tricked me.”

            “That’s quite a trick.” Anakin’s arms folded behind his translucent back. “To make you care for her that much. To get into your very soul. To verify you have one.”

            Kylo couldn’t help sensing what was meant to be a lesson, or a rebuke, or a joke, deadpan delivery notwithstanding. No longer hesitating, he splashed directly through the rainwater pooled before him. “She hates the darkness,” he mumbled, after forging ahead for awhile. “She doesn’t like the way I look at her.”

            “Do you make her feel — uncomfortable?” asked the hooded figure behind him, faintly.

            Kylo could see the firelight in the meadow ahead. He paused for a moment at the treeline.

            Anakin drew to his side. “Young one, she should look _back._ ”

            “She’s scared of me, and of herself. Scared to turn. That’s why she’s uncomfortable.” Kylo’s jaw struggled for purchase amidst the drenched hair plastered around his face. “She pulls away.”

             _ **She wa** nts someo **ne I’m not.**_

            Anakin drew up his hood as if to suggest Kylo do the same. “Why don’t you let her guide you?”

            “ _You_ didn’t,” said Kylo, pointedly.

            The gaze beneath Anakin’s hood looked a million parsecs away. “As I said.”

            Thunder pealed above them. Above the meadow-break in the trees, a serrated streak of lightning split toward the distant shore. Kylo’s flinch was almost palpable at the sight. The ghost by his side flinched even further.

            Kylo readjusted his gaze as he advanced toward Rey’s hut. _**Sh** e’s in there,_ he thought, as usual. _I’m not invit **ed.**_

             _ **She’s up to something. She shouldn’t be able to wake herself up like that,**_ the darkness reminded him.

            “I thought the people who loved me most had turned against me,” Anakin murmured, following along. His voice was halting. Mechanized. Shamed. “Can you imagine? I distrusted my wife, who followed me into a volcano, and my brother, my master, who did the same. I was blind, young one. Foolish. Always pushing against protocol, never able to see how dark forces craved to take advantage of that. Knowing we ought to embrace a larger view of the Force, never able to see what that truly meant.” His arms folded behind his back again. “But my son knew. He knew the truth lay somewhere in-between. He knew how much strength lay in a balanced Force. I gave up my life for him — as I should have for my wife, and for my master, and for the thousands laid to waste in my own blind folly.”

             _ **Is that what he expects YOU to do?**_ the darkness scoffed. _**He’d have you weaken. He’d kill you too.**_

            “Why did you do it?” Kylo demanded, in view of Rey’s hut. “Why did you lay down your life for your son? Why did you let Luke make you weak?”

            Anakin moved forward.

            Suddenly furious, Kylo jerked back — the ghost’s motion mirrored someone else, long ago, advancing down a walkway from which he never returned. Kylo’s rain-drenched face turned suspicious yet immobile, refusing to concede an inch of ground. Not then. Not now. Certainly not with this not-quite-believed, not-quite-possible grandfather.

            More slowly, then, Anakin drew forward. “My son didn’t make me weak, Ben. I was never stronger than in that moment.”

            Source unknown, some sort of bright, gleaming sentiment began to knife its way through Kylo’s dwindling awareness. _Train yourself ..._

            “I saved Luke, it’s true. In a way I saved it all. But I was part of the ravage,” Anakin explained, drawing ever-closer. There was no hesitation in him now. “Long before that, I saved my mother on the frontier of Tatooine. You wouldn’t have read about that. Hardly anyone knew. But the thing was, Ben, that the Jedi would not have had me do it, nor would the Sith. I tried to save her out of love, but I went too far — and my suffering bled into my pain. That’s what the darkness does without the light. When you cannot find balance, you are lost in the storm, adrift, no matter where you are. It clouded me. Clouded the woman I loved. Clouded the Jedi. I murdered countless innocents — that’s the truth, grandson, and the pain of it will haunt me forever. My master’s darkness was a spell, but I could have chosen differently. I _should_ have chosen differently. I could have saved more.” The ghost meant to put a hand aside Kylo’s face. He could not. He trembled. “Do not let my curse become yours.”

            “I won’t. I’ll destroy it.” Kylo’s jaw tightened as he stared right through the projection. “Like I told Rey: no more Sith, no more Jedi. No more Skywalkers. _Then_ we will have peace.”

            “I wish I knew,” Anakin intoned, reaching out, “how that path is any different from a Sith’s.”

            The unknown brightness knifed further. _Train yourself to let go …_

            A loud clatter from within Rey’s hut wrested Kylo’s attention away from the phantom hand nearing his cheek.

             _ **You can’t stop her,**_ the darkness jeered.

            “You know, she’s shorter than I expected.” Anakin dropped his hand with a faint sigh and an even-fainter smile. “Don’t wait until you are about to die, Ben. It’s not long enough.”

             _ **You can’t stop yourself,**_ the darkness reminded him.

            Kylo shook his head. “I can’t go your way. It’s too late. This isn’t happening,” he repeated, peering through the hut door, then staring up at the rain as if doing so would make the moon itself wash away.

            “I’m no one’s best example, Ben. We have had enough destiny here. Only _you_ know the choices you must make.”

             _ **You can’t stop anything.**_ The darkness was not going anywhere.

            “It’s been too long. It hurts too much.” Kylo backed into the open doorway of Rey’s hut, cloak dripping.

            “You know nothing of time,” Anakin murmured softly, fading, evaporating. “You’ll find out. Let go.”

            The brightness, too, would not be ignored. _Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose._

            Footsteps approached. In a shattering burst, darkness swam up to claim him.

 

***

 

            Head throbbing, Kylo snapped awake.

             _ **C** old._ He lay prone on a rough tile floor.

             _ **W** arm._ Next to him, a hearth glittered with metallic scraps.

             _ **R** ey’s hut._ The vague light of dawn spread throughout the domed chamber. Rain no longer assailed its roof. Distant lightsaber fragments continued humming to him, although more faintly now.

            Rey sat nearby. At Kylo’s sudden stirring, her eyes turned stricken, and she shot to her feet. Ready to end him, surely, or snuff him out, if he so much as tried — 

            “Don’t,” Kylo rasped. He struggled to focus. “Don’t — look like that.”

            How long had Rey known how to knock someone unconscious through the Force? And why hadn’t she done it before? One rotation of his stiff neck provided the answer: rough shards of a broken container lay strewn over the hut threshold, where water and loosed flower petals spilled out over the floor. Rey hadn’t needed any Force-tricks; she only needed to clobber him when he was drained and distracted. Ordinarily, Kylo would have reacted to such a discovery with something like a huff, or a bark of outrage, or even a certain amount of restrained amusement, but the Supreme Leader did none of those things. He didn’t even try. Unacceptable.

            Rey breathed too fast. “What did you do to me?”

            “I didn’t want you to run away again.” Kylo’s voice was small. Impossible.

            “Did you touch me?”

            “ _No!_ ” He required no force-bond to know that her eyes were wide, seeing bandits that were not there. Her scraped arm remained exposed, and she’d left her hair tumbled over the bruised side of her neck — shame stabbed into him. It felt less harsh, somehow, now that he could identify the sting. “No, Rey. I wouldn’t.” He wanted to get up.

            She didn’t want him to. “You haven’t exactly proven that.”

            “I know.” He stayed put, rolling his aching head slightly to squint at her. “Search my mind if you like. It’s the truth.”

            Her eyes did not narrow, but they looked wary nonetheless. “You can’t control me.”

            “I know,” he whispered, repetitively.

            “You knocked me unconscious. You went after our lightsabers — ”

            “I didn’t get them,” he objected. “I turned back.”

            “ _And_ you broke my bedchamber door,” Rey continued, tilting her chin toward the door in question. It leaned askew against the inner wall. “How long,” she went on, “do you think it’s going to take for me to ... to forgive all this?”

            “Forever,” he mumbled. His eyes darkened as they slid away from the light.

            “How _long_ , Kylo Ren?”

            His gaze shot back to meet hers. For once, that name stabbed him far more than any shame ever could.

            It was only because of this unceasingly-stonewalled day, Kylo reasoned. It was due to the old pains spreading through him. It was because he could do nothing, not here, not on this inescapable rock. It was those damn apparitions, unsettling him with nonsense and simmering in the farthest reaches of his own mental machinery. It was the brief vision of Rey, dark, like him, and all wrong. Or — or — it was the stricken way she’d scrambled to her feet the second he’d stirred. “As long as you want,” he answered her, at last. “As long as you need.”

            Looming above him, Rey’s hand bridged the air between them.

            Kylo flinched away from it, cringing.

            She paused. Blinked. Retracted.

            Instead, Rey knelt next to the long black pool of him on the floor. It was something she knew. It was something _he_ knew. It was safe. Slowly, she brushed at the impossible, unacceptable tear currently coursing down Kylo’s scarred cheek.

            Their bonded senses meshed with inexorable speed. She was afraid. Afraid he’d hurt her. Afraid she’d kill him. And he — he was horrified. Disbelieving. Paralyzed. What if he had? What if she did?

            “What happened out there?” Rey murmured softly, neither fading nor evaporating.

            Kylo’s eyes raked the shadows as they trembled against the light. “I dreamed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter mini-moodboard [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/173911345590/burn-the-boats-chapter-20-core). 
> 
> Next time: less abstraction, more fluff! Well, more like fluff + angst. Flangst. And maybe more. It's a mystery. ;p 
> 
> **UPDATE ON THE NEXT UPDATE** : Chapter 21 should be posted somewhere around June 8-10. Sorry for the delay and the lack of specifics; scribbletime is sketchy at the moment.
> 
> Catch y'all around the comments and [Tumblr](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com) in the meantime!


	21. Endemic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey took a long, steadying breath. “Let’s strike a bargain.” She drew herself up. _Calm. Compassionate. Extraordinarily careful._ “Teach me how you close yourself off from the Force, and I’ll reassemble our lightsabers.”

            “You’re up early.”

            Rey stopped rummaging in her knapsack long enough to see Kylo’s hulking shadow lurch into view around the metal-patched exterior of her hut.  “You too,” she noted.  

            Humid dawn filtered over the meadow.  Kylo’s silhouette still looked out of place in it.  “Meditation?”

            “And getting fuel.”  Rey extended a hand full of long-burning moss.  “We always need more.”

            He hesitated. 

            Over the past few weeks, hesitating had become part of life.  Rey understood that Kylo had a wilderness of inner circuitry to work through.  She understood that she had to let him do so.

            She had circuitry of her own, after all.  “Do you have anything to exchange today?”  Rey shook the moss gently.

            As Kylo took the fuel, a vision of his pre-dawn activity flashed between them.  Rey saw glossy, silvery creatures below the sea … they jerked to the surface, where Kylo crouched on a rocky expanse … and then their heads snapped, quickly, cleanly, through the Force, before being stuffed into Kylo’s newly-makeshift knapsack.

            Frowning at Rey’s slight recoil, Kylo made as if to hide his pungent haul behind him.  “I know, I know.  ‘A Jedi honors all life.’   _You_ wouldn’t have killed them.” 

            “You don’t know all the things I’ve eaten to survive,” Rey said, quietly. 

            His face shifted to the ground.  “Yes, I do.”

            “I just ... I don’t like the way they feel when they leave the Force,” Rey explained, quieter still.

            Kylo sniffed.  “Of course.”  Slumped.  “Yes.”

            “Luke ate sealife too, you know, much larger than those.  He didn’t use the Force to kill them, though; he had a long spear.”

            He slumped further.  “That seems worse.” 

            “In Jedi theory, it’s not.”  Rey considered this.  “But in practice, yes, I suppose it’s worse.”

            “I don’t have a spear — I don’t have a  _good_  spear,” Kylo amended, at the sight of Rey’s knowing brow. “It’s only a long stake.”  The brow waited.  “I have a _few_ stakes.  Wooden ones.”  The brow persisted.  “And one broken vibroknife.”

            “Is _that_ why you wanted the scissors from the shuttle medpac yesterday?  You can’t use them to make a spear; they’re too useful as they are.”  Rey’s gaze drifted to the twine-stitched hem of her cloak.  After relocating it in the jungle, she’d repurposed several inches into a replacement arm-wrap.  “I can still make some wraps for _you_ ,” she suggested, diverting the subject away from weaponry.  “The sunlight here is stronger than you’re used to.”

            “No,” Kylo waved her invitation away, “but there’s a better option for cutting things.  A plasma blade is more accurate, depending on what you need to trim.”

            It was Rey’s turn to hesitate.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

            Kylo held his tongue, digging it into his cheek.  **_No._** **_Eno_** _ugh._   “Why not?  I already hear the lightsaber fragments calling.  I could find them.”

            Dawn-waking chirps in the adjacent jungle accompanied Rey’s response.  “You can’t rebuild the lightsabers without me.”  

            “I built _mine_.”  

            “Yes, but I have the right tool kit.”

            “Yes.”  He studied her.  “But you’re _here_.”

            Rey wished, briefly, that Kylo had been visited by an entirely different ghost — one who had _not_ been so closely-related to the symbolically-painful weapons she’d worked so hard to remove from an already-painful situation.  “You still want to fight me.”

            “Combat training is different.”  A vein in Kylo’s neck pulsed.  “We can’t dry up here, Rey.”

            She knew he was right.  In a way, they’d already accommodated their separate needs for training.  Rey sparred with Luke’s guidance, but Kylo continued to practice alone.  “All the same,” Rey postulated.  “There’s risk.”

            Kylo huffed.  “If I’d wanted to, I could have attacked you a million times by now.”

            “That’s a pretty argument.”  Rey’s head tilted to the side.  “With what, incidentally?”

            “I don’t know,” Kylo mumbled, flatly.  “A rock.”

            “Seems a bit rustic.”  A quirk disturbed the corners of her mouth.  

            Kylo’s eyes flickered over it.  “Some kind of trap, then.”

            “Do you know how to build a trap?”

            “I could figure it out.”  There was something distinctly Luke-like about Rey’s tone, and something oddly _indulgent_ about Kylo’s.  “A log,” he suggested.  “Suspended in the jungle, with vines.”

            Rey’s lips quirked more.  “How would you cut down an entire tree?”

            “I’d use the Force.”

            “You can uproot a tree with the Force?”  

            The indulgence shorted out.  Kylo’s mouth tightened.  “You’re mocking me.”

            “No, I — ”  Awkwardness crossed Rey’s side of the bond, punctuated by empty pangs.  _Friendship._ _Camaraderie._ **_L_** _oneliness._   Kylo glowered roundly, uselessly, as Rey drew back.  “I suppose I _was_ mocking you, a little.  You _were_ talking about heaving trees into my face.”

            “I was _only_ — ” Kylo cut himself off into a grumble before trying again.  “Don’t you miss practicing with lightsabers?  You _could_ train with somebody corporeal, for once.”

            Rey’s hands clenched around the straps of her knapsack.  _Change the subject._   “How often does your grandfather talk with you?”

            “Not often.”  Kylo’s leather gloves clenched too, making a scouring noise around the moss.  “Sometimes I hear his voice if I — feel — too much.”  He scowled.  Twitched.  Swallowed.  “It’s different.”

            “I hear you, sometimes, at night.”  Rey softened.  “Shouting.”

            The twitching began anew.  “I don’t sleep well.”  His face turned downward.  **_Chang_** _e the subject._    “Why are you awake late enough to hear — things?”

            Rey took a long, steadying breath.   “Let’s strike a bargain.”  She drew herself up.   _Calm._ _Compassionate._ _Extraordinarily careful._   “Teach me how you close yourself off from the Force, and I’ll reassemble our lightsabers.”

            Kylo remained silent for so long, the jungle chirping ever-more loudly behind him, that Rey suspected he was ignoring her.  “Which one first?” he eventually inquired.

            “The teaching.”

            Furrows deepened across his forehead.  “Why don’t you ask Luke to show you?  He locked himself out of the Force for decades.” 

            Rey sighed.  These days, they both made a concentrated effort to _ask_ instead of _sense_.  For once, she regretted it.  “Because it’s the bond I want to close, Kylo.  Temporarily, anyway.  I know you can; you’ve been invisible to me a few times here, longer than I’ve been able to manage on my own.”

            The sunlight filtered over her hesitant companion’s face.  “That’s what you call a ‘proper’ bargain, isn’t it?”

            “We both stand to gain,” Rey nodded, “and we both stand to lose.”

            “According to my grandfather, the Force feels we _need_ the lightsabers.”  

            “What does that mean?”

            “That’s unclear.”  It seemed his monotone protests left her unmoved.  

            “I can ask Luke — ”

            “Your bargain’s not enough,” Kylo interrupted, abruptly.  A glimmer of the old imperiousness wafted between them.  “You’ll have to offer something more.  Practice sparring with me.”  A pause.  “Will you?”

            The old suspicions clanged in Rey’s head. “You _can’t_ be my teacher, Kylo.”

            “You just asked,” he contended, jaw working, “for me to teach you something.”

            Slowly, Rey’s index finger pointed to the sky.  “You can teach me that _one_ technique, for _one_ lightsaber practice.”  

            “One technique.”  Kylo leaned forward.  “ _Ten_ lightsaber practices.”  He hurried on, stemming her automatic dissent.  “Muting yourself from the Force temporarily is difficult, Rey.  It took years for me to understand it.”

            “Years?  I — years?”  She blinked.  

            “Time is something we have,” Kylo replied, “here.”   ** _Thanks to YOU_** , hissed something in the depths of the bond.

            Rey waited.

            Like she had earlier, Kylo took a long, steadying breath.  “But it won’t take nearly that long.  I spent most of that time figuring out if it was even _possible._ I know how, now.  And you’re strong with the Force.”  

            Her eyes felt far too bright.  “You can have four lightsaber practices.”

            “Nine.”

            Rey’s eyes narrowed, brightness notwithstanding.  “ _Two_.”

            “Five.”  Kylo’s lips twitched.

            Rey nodded.  “Agreed.”  She stepped toward her door.  “It’ll take time for us to gather the fragments, and for me to reconstruct the lightsabers.  I’ll need to put mine back together first ... you understand.”

            “And it will take time to explain how to mute the connection between us.  Temporarily.  As you said.”  A stiffness lingered in his voice.

            “All right,” Rey murmured.  She nudged the toe of her boot along a curious sprinkling of flower petals dotting the ground outside her hut.  Their scarlet hue contrasted sharply against the soil.

            The Supreme Leader had already trudged halfway toward his own side of the meadow when Rey called to him.  “Kylo.”

            He straightened.  Turned, stiffly.

            “Did you sense the number of practice sessions I’d accept?”

            A beat.  “I may have.”

            “I barely noticed you doing it.  Scavengers don’t usually have that kind of advantage.”  Rey inclined her head at him.  “You’d have made a good one.”

            “ _Hmph_.”  Kylo could tell that wasn’t exactly a compliment.  But it wasn’t exactly an insult, either.

 

***

 

            “Here,” Rey indicated.  

            Kylo dug an ancient builder’s shovel into a well-hidden circle of stones.  The soil gave way to reveal a well-sealed container, inside of which lay a focusing lens.

            Rey held the final lightsaber component to the morning light, polishing it up a bit.  “That’s the last piece.”  She expected Kylo to be relieved, or resentful.  Likely both.  She wasn’t sure.  

            Over the past month, as Rey practiced switching off the bond — well, _hiding_ from it was a more accurate term — their shared senses had become a pendulum, swinging shut for her, or crashing back into a wall for him.  Most often, the Force clung stubbornly-fast to both of them.  She felt his frustrated resign, and caught visions of his inner struggle.  He sensed her cautious overtures, and likely glimpsed visions of an entirely different struggle.

            Not today.  Beneath the green canopy of the jungle, shovel clutched at his side, Kylo’s look was unreadable.

            Rey knew the circles beneath her eyes had darkened over the past month; they surprised her whenever she caught a glimpse of her reflection in any glassy pool of water.  “So, I’ll put the lightsabers together,” she rattled off.  “And then ... five training sessions.”

            Kylo strode beside her without comment.

            Picking their way through the jungle, Rey began to reconsider her policy against babbling when she realized Kylo had come to a halt.  She turned to find him staring up into the canopy of a slim, smooth-barked tree.

            “What is it?”  Rey craned her neck to observe a series of yellow-green spheres growing beneath the billowing fronds. 

            “I’ve never seen Ishi Tib-cracked coconuts growing outside of a holobook before.”  Kylo took note of Rey’s puzzled expression.  “You don’t know what they are?  The Resistance never had donuts, or fizzyglug?”

            She goggled at him.  “Are those — things?”

            “Yes,” Kylo stated.  “Sweets,” he clarified.  “You like them,” he clarified further.

            “I do.”  Rey stifled a yawn, and her agreement turned apologetic.  “Sorry.  I’m a little tired.”

            “You’re not sleeping.”  Again, he looked at her unreadably.

            Cheeks pinking, Rey focused atop the challenge-worthy tree.  “How are we supposed to reach these _coconoots?_ ”

            “Coconuts.”  His voice sounded funny.

            Rey eyeballed him, but he was only staring at her.  “Kylo,” she chided, simply.

            Two sets of jaws tightened as they returned to examining the pods, high above.

            “I could fly you up there,” Kylo suggested, already unfurling a hand at his side.

            “Thank you, no.”  Rey rounded the tree, glancing upward.  A short while later, she tied a repurposed vine around the trunk, fastened it around her waist, and set about climbing with a scavenger’s carefully-braced motions.  At the top, a stake made short work of detaching the pods.

            “You could use the Force,” Kylo called up to her.

            “This works fine,” Rey called back, as a tangled bundle of pods plunged to the fern-cushioned soil below.

            Kylo’s gaze darkened as Rey returned to level ground.  “Still practicing closing yourself off from the bond?”

            “Well, yes,” she admitted, pulling the yellow-green bundle between them.  “That _was_ part of the bargain.”

            “I suppose.”  His jaw remained fixed.  “Have you discovered what emotion works best for you?”

            Rey mulled her answer carefully.  Kylo’s bond-muting strategy began with hiding one’s actions behind a heightened, entirely-unrelated emotion.  Those connected to each other through the Force often proved too distracted by the overlapping emotion to sense the reality behind it — as if temporarily overloading an electrode with alternate feedback.  When Kylo muted his own connection, or so he told her, he usually called upon pain, or anger.  But sometimes — like when he discovered Luke in the jungle — Kylo proved so invisible to her that Rey couldn’t identify _what_ Force-dulling emotional-feedback he called upon.  She suspected, though, that he used numbness itself.  The suspicion troubled her.  “Calm,” she declared. “I’m trying calm.”

            Together, they stared down at the cracked-coconuts.

            “How do you eat these?” Rey inquired.

            One hour and several unsuccessful, completely Force-free experiments later, Rey found herself peering over the ledge of a sandy dune near the beach.

            THUMP.

            The coconut landed below, a short distance away from Kylo’s feet.  It appeared undisturbed by the drop.

            Rey slid down the dune.  “We just have to try again.”  

            One of the coconuts hovered into the air. 

            “Wait!” Rey cried, only to duck as it exploded in a flood of white, fibrous shards, drenching the hem of her tunic as it went.  The remains of the fruit lay, pulverized, in the sand.

            Kylo’s fingers quickly resumed contraction at his side.  “Sorry,” he mumbled.   _Sha **me.**_ **_Anger._** **_Frustra_** _tion._ “ _Sorry_ ,” he repeated, testily, readjusting his wall against her.  

            Rey’s hand fluttered to his shoulder.  “It’ll take time.”

            “I’m aware.”  His eyes fell to her hand, small and light against the enormity of his pleated frame.  “Suppose I can’t?”

            “Then … ” Rey trailed off.  She had no answer.

            “Then,” Kylo completed her thought, “here we are.  Doing what _you_ say.”

            “I do know,” Rey began, “what it’s like to be trapped somewhere you don’t want to be, waiting — ” 

            “And keeping everyone at a distance,” Kylo interjected, finishing what he _assumed_ was her thought.

            Rey drew back.  “Waiting for someone who can’t return, when someone else still could.” 

            His gaze raked the sand.  Walled.

            The irony of a warden consoling a prisoner fell heavily on Rey’s heart.  She bent, unfastening her boots and heading for the water, welcoming the distraction of rinsing off her tunic.  “I’ll think of _something_  that will open those mystery-spheres.  They wouldn’t be called _cracked_ coconuts if they weren’t meant to be cracked.”

            “A lightsaber would work.”

            “Probably.  Once I rebuild them.”  Rey glanced back at him, the tide washing over her toes. 

            Oh. 

            She couldn’t wade in _now_.  Not with Kylo there, lingering.  

            Gods, why couldn’t he stick to casual conversation?  They were getting better at it, weren’t they?  Rey shifted on the shore, first one foot, then another.  “I haven’t forgotten our bargain, Kylo.”

            He turned, more stiffly than ever.  “Good.”

            By the time Rey waded into the cove, Kylo had gone, lugging a few coconuts with him.   Then, by the time Rey’s clothes dripped dry on the shore — _and_ by the time she’d carried off the rest of the fruits — she’d already puzzled out a few possibilities.  About the coconuts.  

            Just those.

            Nothing else.

            Back at her hut, a few measured whacks with a sharp durasteel panel removed the top from one of the difficult spheres.  Discovering that it brimmed with deliciously-sweet liquid, Rey gave a delighted cry — she had to show, to share — 

            She caught sight of Kylo across the meadow.  From her ancient hut-window, Rey watched him move forward, then double back.  He turned away, squaring his shoulders.  He stomped.  Finally, lurching further into the open grasses, he disappeared into the jungle.

             _Strange._   Rey headed out to investigate.  A wilted, blush-colored flower lay discarded among the waving grasses.  

 

***

 

            “Your pivot is off.”

            Rey struck one end of her extinguished lightstaff into the ground.  “I know.  I’m still too fast on the turns.”  

            Afternoon shadows textured the jungle clearing.  Time was easily lost during their training sessions here, but that didn’t matter anymore.  This was their fifth.  This was their last.

            A bargain was a bargain.

            Sweat ringed Kylo’s shoulders.  His hair, wilder and longer now, plastered across his skin.  Training in tropical climes necessitated being as light as possible, which meant he was shirtless.  Rey refused to do the same.  During their first practice, Kylo’s suggestion that she outfit herself in only her tunic had been met with little more than a wry glare.  Kylo seemed unruffled, but he never mentioned it again.

            At least Rey wouldn’t have to look at him like this anymore.  Looking at him, especially while doing _this_ , was a problem. 

            Did he know that?

            Battle remained his main element.  Rey understood, now, why Kylo had trained so often: it was what he knew.  It was _his_ scavenger-routine.  His survival.  His habit.  He still drew on anger for most of his attacks, yet when sparring with her, he’d started to experiment  — or so Rey told herself, anyway — and sometimes he drew on calm, or at least an empty coolness that _passed_ for calm. 

            Kylo hadn’t extinguished his lightsaber.  All it took was a slight forward-crouch to indicate that he awaited her attack.

            “We should stop,” Rey said.  “It’s getting late.”

             ** _Are y_** _ou sure?_ he sent her, over the Force.

             _I thought we weren’t going to talk over the Force anymore_ , she sent back.   _For awhile, anyway_ , she corrected herself.   _Not after I learned to close the bond._

            The red glow of Kylo’s plasma blades disappeared as he thumbed them off.  “Rey.  I need to tell you something.”  He straightened.  “When you disconnect from the bond, it doesn’t always work.”

            Her face froze.

            “I’m not sure why.  Sometimes you don’t mute the connection correctly.”  He continued almost impassively, likening her attempts to the pivot, pointing out that it took time to learn how to slip out of a Force-bond, after all, and _he_ wasn’t always successful either ... 

            Rey heard little.  Her brain spun until Kylo looked at her and Rey looked away and gods, she could not _look_ anywhere, ever again.  “Did it work,” she asked, sounding mildly strangled, “last night?”

            “No.”

            Rey leaned her forehead against her staff.  Her own wilder, longer hair did an excellent job of hiding the heat in her face. 

            “Rey, it’s all right — ”

            “Let’s go again,” she got out.  “This is a practice.”

            “Rey — ”

            Blue, dual-ended blades thrummed into view.  When Kylo silently followed suit, Rey charged.

            He parried her easily.

            “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rey asked, staring up at him through the glow.  “Or stop me?”

            “When?”  Kylo blinked down at her.  “When I sensed your desire over the bond?  When you started thinking about me?  Or when you started touching yourse — ”

            A horrified shriek fell out of her, cutting him off.  Spinning, Rey drove him backward.

            They moved through the jungle’s ever-changing obstacle course, avoiding vines, stepping over boulders.  In all five practices, a more-controlled Rey avoided striking out at him in anger — and even now, although her face was on fire, anger wasn’t part of it.  

             _Embarrassment._ _Emptiness._ _Fear._

            “You don’t have to feel like that,” Kylo insisted, his voice low in his throat.

            “ _I know!_ ”  Rey clasped her staff on the backhand.

            “You could push all those feelings out of your mind,” he added, readying a dodge.  He was using defensive guards only, letting her attack.

            Rey pivoted, turning.  “I thought I _did!_ ”

            “Or — I could just ignore it,” Kylo rasped, his jaw working.  Another parry.

            “Then why — _ngh_ — didn’t you?”  She swung an inch out from his ankles.

            He spun aside, blocking Rey’s second plasma blade as it neared their observed practice-distance.  “You _know_ why,” he said, teeth clenching.  Even now, she could sense his confusion.  His intrigue.  His hunger.

            His loneliness.

            “We can’t talk about this.”  Rey shook her head.   ** _You’re_** **_still scarred._** **_Yo_** _u’ll go too far._

            “You’re trembling.”   ** _You’re sca_** _rred too._ _You’re the one who won’t let me leave._

            She rounded a vine-tangled tree.  Kylo took the opposite side.  Beyond it, a vast carpet of flowers gave way beneath their boots. 

            His lightsaber pointed down as she whirled toward him.

            The bladeless midsection of Rey’s staff struck him square in the chest.  She'd expected him to block her attack.

            He stomped backward, his free hand braced against his old wounds.

            Worry lit her from within.  “Kylo — ”

            He glared, breathing heavily.  “I’m _fine_.”  He turned his back to her, still bracing the place she’d healed numerous times. His lightsaber crackled off.  “Your point,” he muttered.

            Deactivating her weapon, Rey struggled to catch her own breath.  “You let me win.”

            “That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”  In the gathering shadows, his broad, massive back looked rigid.

            “No, it doesn’t.”  Rey’s hands were bone-white where they contracted around her lightstaff.  His wounds didn’t _feel_  like they needed any Force-healing ... “Especially not during our last practice.”

            His gaze sank into the scented clearing.  “We’d better get back.”

            They returned to the huts in silence. Stopped to inspect a patch of herbs along the way. Stopped, again, for a fresh drink at the waterfall-spring. Went to their separate shelters. Offered Force-floating good-nights.

            But the next morning, when Rey stepped out for her daily meditation, she found a stoop covered with flowers.  

            Or rather, _flooded_ with flowers. 

            Seemingly every endemic variation on white petals was present.  Ruffled, spiraled, spotted, striped.  Some with thorns, but most without.  Their scent drifted into Rey’s senses with the insistence of a tropical storm — sweet, bitter-rooted, peppery-spiced, and green.

            She crossed the meadow along a track that would have been better-worn by now, if only their paths had been different.  If only she weren’t so afraid.  If only wild space was home.

            “I brought you a bandage.”  Rey peeked through the open door of Kylo’s hut.  

            “I told you, I’m fine.” He set his lightsaber on the table.

            She wondered if that particular accessory was ever going to leave his side, now that he had it back.  She wondered if he could ever do anything without going too far.  She wondered if she’d driven him mad that night, any night, without intending to.  She wondered — if she asked — if he might — but she said, simply, “I still can’t get the pivot right.  We should probably keep practicing until I do.”  Her gaze sank onto the floor of his hut.  “Thank you,” she murmured.  For the flowers.  For ignoring it.

            “You’re welcome,” he replied.  For the flowers.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) WHOA, WHEN DID BTB REACH OVER 10K HITS?! That’s so overwhelming! Thank you so, so much, you uplifting space-kittens you, for reading and commenting! This has been an extremely busy month, and burnout is too real. This helps!
> 
> (2) Mini-moodboard for this chapter [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/174832418535/burn-the-boats-chapter-21-endemic). Overall fic moodboard [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/171645544250/moodboard-for-my-burn-the-boats-fic-needed-some).
> 
> (3) Finally, a brief Q&A:
> 
> Q: Say pal, isn’t this like three chapters in one? And did you cut an eventful fourth-section finale because it was too long?
> 
> A: Aaaaaaaaaaaggggh kinda. These three time-advancing vignettes connected in so many subtle ways that separating them didn't work for me. Luckily, the chopped fourth section = the next chapter, after some retooling. (Which means BTB is now 26 chapters instead of 25.) Also, if I have to edit this chapter any further I fear my brain will leak from my ears, so _voila_ , please don’t hate me, I feel the tension too, it burns us all. 
> 
> (⊙_≦) *twitch* 
> 
> See y’all around the comments and [Tumblr](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com), where I do/shall post fic update-progress!


	22. Ellipses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You _are_ strong enough to leave the darkness … It doesn’t take a ghost to sense it.” Her skin caught the starlight, the firelight. “It’ll just take time.”
> 
> He made no sound.
> 
> “We have that,” Rey ruminated.
> 
> Was he moving closer? Did she summon him?
> 
> “Best to stay here,” she went on.
> 
> “I’d take you back with me,” Kylo said, sitting next to her, somehow, “if you ever change your mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Sexual content, mildly dubious consent-tropes.

            “It’s an inefficient heat source.”  Rey added another branch to the fire.  “But it’s pretty.”

            “Pretty rustic,” Kylo put in.

            Rey’s small bonfire crackled in the night atop a sea cliff, where dense jungle gave way to a grass-lined overlook.  Waves rolled far below.  Above, the stars continued to form a bright, endless ocean of their own.

            It remained beautiful. 

            At least one of them noticed, now.

            After months of mild coaxing, Rey had finally convinced Kylo to join one of her occasional cliff-vigils here.  He hadn’t seen the point, before.  They hadn’t sensed any passing starships, and Rey still refused to build a subspace transceiver.  But the sea cliff wasn’t for sensing ships, according to Rey; it was for meditating on the stars.  

            Kylo _really_ hadn’t seen the point, then.  Nonetheless, there he sat. Looming. 

            “New experiment.”  Rey proffered a gourd-canteen.  “We’re trying a better tea.  I added muja fruit and coconut juice to those florets you found.”

            He glanced at the canteen for a moment before sampling as requested.  “Not bad.” The container smelled sweet; he set it aside.  “It’s cold.”

            “Well, the fire’s warm.”  The night breeze stirred her hair.  “What should we call it?”

            Kylo scanned the canteen again.  “Does it need a name?”

            “Everything does.”  An image of Finn sparked into Rey’s memory.  “When you have a name, then you belong.  Even droids have names.”  

            “More like designations,” Kylo muttered.

            “Not if you ask _them_.”

            He fell silent.

            “I could call it muja-leaf wine.”  Rey fisted her hands into the blanket spread out beneath her, forever grafting the awkward pauses between herself and the shadow-prisoner across the fire.  “It’s not exactly wine, but if it sat long enough, at the right temperature, the sugars might ferment — ” 

            “How long do you think we’ll be here?”

            Rey’s chin tilted to the sky, evaluating the ellipses of the uncharted stars more intently than before.  “Do you still want to bring a new order to the galaxy?”  

            More silence.

            Blast.

            She cleared her throat.  “Now — now that I think of it, I suppose we ought to name the moon.”

            For once, Kylo didn’t hesitate.  “Detention Block M-2.”  

            “M-2?”  Rey puzzled, blinking over at him.  “Is the M for ... moon?”

            “And 2,” he explained, in monotone, “because there are two of us.”  

            “That’s an _awful_ name, Kylo.”  Rey’s lips quirked into a smile.

            An old emotion slashed through the bond with near-blinding abruptness.

             ** _Jealous_** _y._

            Rey’s smile vanished.

            It was Kylo’s turn to examine the stars, the line of his neck pulsing.  He didn’t apologize.  

            Sometimes he didn’t.  

            Rey wasn’t sure why.  Did he need to be reprimanded by his own ghostly guide first?  Did he ration his apologies, thinking they’d weaken him?  Or did it represent an awful, slippery slope back toward the darkness, where she could not — _would_ not — follow? 

            Whatever the reason, they probably shouldn’t talk about it.  Best to let time work its own healing Force-magic.  Best to stay here.  Wherever _this_ was.  

            She should just let it go.  

            As usual.

            Of course.

            Sod it.  “What brought that on?”

            Kylo shifted.

            “When I mentioned names,” Rey deduced, “I thought about Finn.  Was that it?”

            Something like chagrin flickered across his face.

            “I know you’re working through the darkness, Kylo.  I know it’s difficult.  I know there are good days, and bad.  I _do_ understand, more than — more than I ever expected to.  But you’ve no right to be jealous.  You know that.”  Rey drew her knees against her chest, even as her oldest, most casually-chipper tone returned.  “Besides, it’s just us.  I’m here with _you_.”

            “Not — happily.”  The dark hollows beneath his eyes looked more prominent than ever.

            “When,” Rey demanded, dark hollows beneath her _own_ eyes, “was the last time _you_ were happy?”

            And at once, from beneath the kind of rocks only Rey could lift, Kylo’s memories flashed over the bond. General Organa wrapped him in a hug ... a mustached man laughed, low and long ... Rey watched Kylo practicing early forms with Luke ... lightsabers ... training.  At some point in the memory-haze, contentment clouded into triumph, any kind: he found the girl instead of the droid.  Discovered he wasn’t alone.  Ended Snoke’s torment before it stole her from him.  Finally took what he wanted — the galaxy, not her.  Confirmed she was not seriously hurt, not dead,  _here_ ... Rey on the beach ... Rey sparring between the trees ... Rey above him in the meadow ... Rey by the waterfalls ... Rey in the hot spring ... Rey asleep among the flowers ... Rey,  _here_.

            “It’s been awhile, then.” A faint pink clung to her cheeks. It was better to acknowledge Kylo’s silence instead of her involuntary intrusion, of course.

            “Yes.”  He, in turn, acknowledged the easiest answer.  “Not like you.  You could always be happy.”

            Rey sat straight up, the play of firelight and shadow mercifully screening her expression.  “There are _no words_ to explain how wrong that is.”

            Frustration throttled the Force.  “ _No_.  No, that’s not what I mean.  In the bond, you would smile, or you would laugh.  Only — you’d stop, whenever I appeared.”  Kylo’s gaze trailed over Rey’s ramrod-straight position before he let out a sigh.  Haltingly, a voluntary image issued into the connection between them: FN-2187, stormtrooper of the First Order, frozen amidst chaos in a burning Jakku village.

            Rey couldn’t help but wince. She’d never seen Finn in the old enemy-armor, beneath the old enemy-heel, his mind roiling where only Kylo Ren ... and Rey, now ... could see. Together, apart, they watched FN-2187 deliberating. Choosing. _Leaving_ , despite all indoctrination to the contrary.

            Kylo’s stare looked a thousand parsecs away.  “He left so easily.”

            “ _That’s_ why you’re jealous of Finn?” 

            “Not at first.  And not — now.  But I saw something,” Kylo conceded, “when I looked at him.”  The void of his eyes blackened in the firelight.  “I saw a man who was strong enough to leave the darkness, when I could not.”

             ** _He found his way to your side.  He resisted, in all that light.  And you’d smile, a_** _nd you’d laugh._  

            Realization thudded into Rey’s chest.  “You told me, once, that you spared three lives.  Besides mine, was Finn one of them?”

            “I didn’t kill him in the forest, did I?”

            “You almost did.”  Rey’s voice had a distinct quiver in it.

             ** _Shame.  Despair.  Gra_** _ndfather, this isn’t working._   Kylo lumbered to his feet.  “I’ll go.”

            “Stay.”  It would have been an order if her voice hadn’t quivered again.

            Wordlessly, Kylo sat, closer to the fire this time.  His cloak gave him the look of a hunching bird.

            “Thank you for telling me,” Rey forced out, clearing her throat.  It was a perfectly reasonable reaction, she told herself.  Seeing her old friend again, in such torment, would upset even a _well-rested_ jailer.  And seeing _Kylo_ , again, like that, was — “I hope you’ll reveal the last one you saved someday.”

            Kylo didn’t seem to hear her.  “You feel like you’ve given up a lot, to come here.  To save the galaxy from me.”

            “I did give up a lot,” Rey affirmed.

            Sea breeze, salty and sharp, twisted through Kylo’s hair.  “You were right, in a way.  I wouldn’t have stopped.”

            “And now?”

            His chin tilted, askew.  “I guess we won’t know.”

            Rey knew that chin; it went in the opposite direction of her own.  Perhaps it always would.  “There’s no Supreme Leader here, remember?”

            “As you’ve said.”  Kylo paused.  “But there’s no Jedi, either.”

            “None living, anyway.”

            He nodded.  “Just scavengers.”

            “I — I’m glad to hear you no longer consider that a bad thing.”

            “One adapts.  To survive.”

            “One does, Kylo.”  Rey pushed a twig into the fire, watched it snap, watched it turn to embers and char.  “A person gets used to things, is all.  That’s all.”

            He glowered into the flames.  Months of terraformed sunlight had made his inscrutable face a little less pale.  The rest of his frame looked a little more wiry, but no less immense.  

            His eyes, though.  

            Aside from their increasingly-troubled hollows, Kylo’s haunted eyes hadn’t changed at all.

            Something within Rey's deeply-seated inner control rebelled at the realization.  Rebelled, and resisted. One could always make another choice, as Luke would say. 

            “You can ask me what _I’m_ used to,” Rey prodded, gently.  

            “Why?” He didn't look at her.

            “That’s what people do, isn’t it? People who aren’t jailed _talk_ while they look at the stars.” Her gaze fell on her lightstaff near the blanket’s edge. “When they’re not dueling in an abandoned jungle, people talk.”

            Kylo’s eyebrows pinched together.  “About things they already know the answer to?”

            “Yes, especially.  Exactly.”

             Across the bond, distance gave way to uncertainty.  “What are you used to?”

            “I’m used to surviving.  And ... I’m used to waiting.”  Another twig met its end in the fire as Rey rummaged through an invisible knapsack of what to say.  How could she explain her mission, explain _herself_ , so that he might understand?  “I’m used to this moon, by now.  And I’m used to you.”

            Distant waves and thrumming creature-sounds punctuated the silence between them.

            Rey pressed on.  “Sometimes, that makes me feel lonely and — ”

            “Tired,” Kylo finished, expressionlessly.

            She took a steadying breath.  “We’re alone. Of course we feel ... strange, sometimes. But you know this thing between us can’t work.  It feels like it’s something I — ”

            “Won’t ever deserve,” he finished again.

            “No, Kylo,” Rey said softly, watching his head dip, realizing that he’d pulled his _own_ thoughts from the Force-flown wilderness of their minds. “No. It feels like something I ought to think about as being _temporary_.” She wasn’t trembling, not yet, but she was hardly steady. “I can’t ... I can’t trust temporary people. Not anymore. I have to remember that everything passes, or is lost, eventually.” A floating shower of sparks from the bonfire danced into the sky. Danced, then disappeared. “So, I wait. I train, and I hope. Like we’ve been doing, you see? It’s the only way.”

            The outline of Kylo’s face ticked as he continued staring fixedly into the fire.  “What are you waiting for?”

            “If you won’t give up the Order, and if this bond between us can’t be dissolved, then ... I’m just waiting.  I can survive here.  You can too.”  Her shoulders squared.  The other option was far more dangerous to even _attempt_ to explain.  “Otherwise, I ... I’m waiting for Ben.”

            He hunched so far down into himself that she thought he might implode.  “I’m not him. I’m _not_ him.”  

            “Then why,” Rey parried, the slight quiver returning, “does part of you think he’ll never ‘deserve it?’”

             ** _Because I n_** _ever will._

            “Why do _you_ think everything is temporary?” Kylo countered.

             _Because I lose everyone._

            Rey felt Kylo’s eyes boring into her across the fire, enough to make her abandon the invisible knapsack completely.

            Too much.

            Back to the usual.

            Rebellion or not, she was so, so tired.

            “Are you cold?” Rey fiddled with her cloak.  The sea cliff sharpened the night air into something far more biting; perhaps  _that_ was why she’d talked too much. So much biting, impossible talk, on such a lonely, sleepless moon.

            Kylo shook his head.  Temperature hardly touched him in all that black.

            Except for his eyes.

            Once more, Rey’s chin tilted toward the sky. Trying not to look. Trying to casually wrap-up any loose ends for the night. “I think you were wrong earlier, by the way. You _are_ strong enough to leave the darkness, like Finn. Like your grandfather. It doesn’t take a ghost to sense it.” Her skin caught the starlight, the firelight. “It’ll just take time.”

            He made no sound.

            “We have that,” Rey ruminated.

            Was he moving closer?  Did she summon him?

            “Best to stay here,” she went on.

            “I’d take you back with me,” Kylo said, sitting next to her, somehow, “if you ever change your mind.”

            It was her turn to gaze fixedly into the fire.  “You and what army?”

            “You’re not sleeping again.”

            Rey couldn’t look at the taught outline of Kylo’s chin, nor the artful prominence of his brow.  “I’m used to it.  Sometimes I couldn’t sleep on Jakku.”   _Too hot.  Too lonely.  Too many pieces to put back together, lest I break._  “When I was older, imagining an ocean no longer helped me sleep.  So, I suppose — I suppose touching myself to sleep sometimes worked, years ago.  I thought little of it then.”  Rey refortified her Force-defenses, trying to keep her visions from spilling into his. Trying to apologize.  “I’m sorry for thinking I could hide it from you, here.  I won’t do it again.”

            His face was marble.

            “Why can’t _you_ sleep, Kylo?”  Sitting so closely, Rey felt him physically flinch at her use of his newer name. 

            Oh.

            Surely it was better to name things as they were.  He’d told her as much, over and over.

            “I have nightmares,” Kylo stated, almost inaudibly.

            And Rey could see them, then, all the haunted failures and the terrible, drowning decisions, the violent feedback and the knifing shame, and she shut her brimming eyes, and it didn’t work, none of it was working, and her cheeks turned damp. She sensed that Kylo thought her _odd_ ... odd for ever wanting him, a brute, someone she’d locked up, the mirror-opposite of her in every way ... dark where she was light, hard where she was soft, weighted-down where she was differently-weighted. Yet powerful, where she was powerful. Sleepless, where she was sleepless. Alone, where she was alone. Wet, where her face was wet ... although Rey was wet elsewhere, between her fidgeting legs ... and before the bond could complete its more suggestive points, Rey’s lips found his, a tidal wave of relief, relief, _relief_ surging through the Force.

            Kylo pulled her close against him. His grasp strayed to Rey’s side, below her cloak. Moved to her thigh.

            As directed.

            When they parted for air his voice rolled through her like fog across the sea.  “If you can’t sleep, and you don’t want to touch yourself — I could touch you.”  

            Her face looked aflame. “That’s not a fair bargain.”

            As expected.

            “Just to sleep.”  His hands rooted at the hollow of her back.  “Just you.”

            Was her bottom lip trembling? “You’re still recovering.”

            “You’re still _afraid_ ,” he got out.  “Even after all this time.  Even though you have control.  Even though it would mean nothing.”

             _Rey’s_  eyelid twitched.

            The fire snapped, sparked.

            Kylo bit the inside of his cheek.  Rey could feel him do it, oddly enough: a ragged, textural dullness, despairing beneath his immobile expression.  She was only going to get up and leave.  He’d have to let her.

            Rising, Rey tugged Kylo to his feet.  

            He blinked.  “Not —  _here?_ ”  

             “Yes,” Rey said, her face all the more aflame. “Here.”

            Kylo eyed the grass-covered overlook. **_She still doesn’t want me in her hut; she still d_** _oesn’t understand_ — fingers twitching at his side, Kylo sealed the rest of his reflected thoughts away. “It’s not exactly comfortable,” he contended, eyeing her like he’d eyed the unfamiliar terrain. 

            “I slept on the ground most of my life.  One adapts, right?”  Rey removed her cloak, as if this particular bargain meant nothing, indeed.

            Disbelievingly, almost suspiciously, Kylo followed suit with his own cloak, and when Rey used hers to line the blanket beneath her, he added his to the improvised pile. His lightsaber followed, next to hers.

            Rey set about removing her boots as if she simply meant to warm her feet by the fire. It crackled away, blissfully insentient.

            Kylo stared.   ** _Don’t scare her.  Don’t scare her.  D_** _on’t —_

            “You don’t scare me.”

            He found enough sense to huff.

            “Well,” Rey allotted. “You don’t scare me _enough_. That’s probably part of the problem,” she mused, ever the analyst, before his gloved hands encased hers, and then he was pressing her closer, downward, his mouth renewing its determination against hers before she could reach any more impossible conclusions. 

            Rey reclaimed her hands.  Rejoined his tongue.  It was only another bargain, she reasoned.  

            If she was going to stay here, waiting, she could want something.  

            She could want _something_.  

            Especially if it meant nothing.

            Kylo eventually adjusted himself on his side against her, prone, with a few low-throated apologies — no, he’d crush her if he leaned like that — gods, what was she supposed to do with her extra arm, caught up between them — no, Rey, _hell_ — if she touched any part of him right now, even this shoulder, or that forearm, he wouldn’t be able to _focus_.  Rey quelled a desperately-awkward giggle, which they were both altogether _sure_ shouldn’t happen if things were proceeding correctly.  

            It was one thing to watch an educational holovid or roll one’s eyes at lurid stories; it was another thing entirely to understand how to begin touching another person in so intimate a fashion. Rey knew Kylo’s own self-explorations were occasional, at best, and spiteful, at worst — neither of which seemed useful at the moment.

            But he’d heard, and felt, and bond-reflected _her_ , touching herself.  

            And no matter how mad Kylo thought that would eventually drive him, as his recent memories blurred into her Force-visions, Rey realized he intended to use them for _reference_. He seemed to conjure something about her posture, and where her hands sat ... and a lot of sounds ... hushed ones, of course, which apparently hadn’t been hushed at all. Not to him.

            Kylo hardly noticed Rey’s cheeks reddening during his scrutiny of her confusingly-asymmetrical tunic. The layers confounded him for a few beats before he altered his approach. Reaching beneath, instead, he took hold of her waistband and cautiously maneuvered her trousers down. Her underwear followed, even more cautiously. 

            He figured she’d stop him, Rey sensed.  He reasoned she’d leave.

            She didn’t.

            Her heart beat into his brain, the bond pounding between them.

            “Are you all right?”

            “I’m _fine_ ,” she asserted, untangling the discarded clothing beneath her and Force-floating it near their lightsabers. The tips of her ears were on fire. No, _Kylo’s_ ears were on fire. “Just — don’t take off anything else.” 

            A wordless objection rolled through his throat.  Her jaw tightened at the reflection.  

            Or his did.  Or hers.  

            Somehow, it was muddled.

            Furrowing, nodding, Kylo peeled back the lower layers of her tunic like the petals of a flower.  Rey’s legs shifted beneath, below, as his hand grazed toward her thighs.

             _W **ai** t_, ordered the bond.

            “Not with those,” Rey ventured.

            It took him a moment to realize that she meant his gloves.  It took him no time at all to slip out of them.

            Rey’s legs inched apart as Kylo’s bare fingers trailed upward. Skin against skin, shadow against light, dual feelings jumbled their senses. 

             _I’m so tir **ed.  This mea** ns nothing. _

             _I’m s **o lonely.  Just y** ou, just to sleep._

            His massive palm reached the apex of her thighs.  Paused, then cupped.  

            Held.

            Catching her breath, Rey couldn’t decide whether the Force was generous or wicked.  But she _could_ feel what Kylo felt — how warm she was, how soft, and how incredibly, undeniably wet.  She could feel his arousal, in turn, and how he’d ached to touch her — how long he’d waited for her to realize that _something_ between them was right.  Or unavoidable.  Or inescapable.

            Inescapable, most of all.

            His fingers slid forward.

            “Oh,” Rey whispered.  And when his jaw worked, her jaw worked, and she knew why.  He felt it too.

            She waited.

            Waited a little longer.

            Longer still.

            Kylo  _lingered_.  Soundlessly feeling her, memorizing her  Marveling, at this.

             _This_ , finally.  

            This was hardly nothing.

            Rey squirmed, once, twice, before her fist thumped onto the cloak-covered ground.  “ _Please_.”

            His startled expression gave way to something resembling understanding: he was taking too long. His lips twitched, and the only thing that spared him a wallop was the fact that he didn’t _truly_ smile — he never did, after all — and the additional fact that his touch became, with readjusted, elliptical application, far more serious against the crest of her folds.

            “ _Oh._ ” Rey covered her mouth.

            Her hand flew back, pried away with the Force — _**I wa** nt_ — the compulsion receded in a rush of shame, leaving her hand her own. “I’d like,” Kylo corrected himself, every ear between them  _scalding_ , “to hear you.”

            She stared up at him.  “You — why?”

            But then the bond showed her that Kylo thought of how she touched herself, in her hut, in her bed, in the flower-dappled shadows when she thought he couldn’t see or hear.  

            She’d thought about _Ben_. She wanted Ben. Longed for Ben.

            She always had.

             ** _If I can’t be him, if she won’t turn, just let me have this. Ju_** _st this._

            The slow, testing circles of his fingers started in earnest, and Rey’s gasps turned into the sort of dulcet keening that carried out across the waves, beneath the glitter of stars in the night.

            “It's all right.” Kylo’s eyes were locked on her face. “No one’s going to overhear you.”

             _That’s not the point._   Rey didn’t know where to look.   _Stop staring at me._

            He obeyed, leaning down beside the shell of her ear.  “It’s — difficult not to.”

            “ _Try_ ,” Rey ground out.  She could sense, bewilderingly, how beautiful he found her.  All of her.  Her resourcefulness, her perseverance, but also her wildness, and her supple, secret curves, the heretofore temporary glimpse of which, unbelievably, she didn’t quite believe he’d stored away.  He had, though.  Gods, he was doing it _now_.  Her skin, her smell — her scent — Rey smelled like flowers, everywhere, haunting him, robbing him of sleep — 

            “Is _that_ why you keep leaving me flowers?” Rey demanded, albeit breathlessly.

            “Do you like — them?”  He sounded vaguely embarrassed.

            Supreme Leaders weren’t in the habit of giving out flowers, Rey reasoned.  “I — I do like them,” she stammered, “but it’s not as though you have to — ”

            Kylo leaned down to kiss her, muffling her response after all, muffling even the sounds which followed — a mix of indignation at being cut off and timorous, blissful surprise as Kylo’s fingers located the exact spot for which the bond was pleading.

            Rey’s hips canted toward him.  Her own fingers felt slick.  Coiling, Kylo dragged his lips down her throat.  

             ** _You trapped me here.  You made me weak._**

            Rey made a decidedly _less_  keening noise at the darkness filling the space between their minds. 

             ** _But I won’t let you go_** , the strangeness went on, undeterred. 

            Rey felt Kylo holding back.  He was hard as hell, his teeth practically scraping against her neck.  Trying not to say anything greedy.  Trying to keep away from feedback, from control.  Trying not to draw any darkness from the passion that should have been hers, and not so much his.  

            This bargain wasn’t supposed to make _him_  feel good.

            Something significantly more painful than desire assailed him as well; Rey sensed it. The light. Weakness. Calm. Kylo couldn’t have calm, not now. If there was calm then he would _remember_ and he would **_burn_** and he’d stay trapped here, out of control, and she — _she’d never_ — **_why won’t she_** — without hesitation, Rey reached for his chin, lifting his face to hers.

            “Breathe,” she murmured. She wasn’t sure which one of them needed the reminder. He inhaled. She exhaled. And as Kylo slowly slipped a finger inside of her, as stretched, dizzying warmth filled both of them, all other thought drained from the bond. The world shot into balance while Rey coaxed Kylo’s aura to hers.

            Not weakness.

             _Po **w** er_.

            It shocked them both.

            “Kiss me,” she begged him.  Ordered him.

            Kylo never left Rey’s mouth, never left Rey’s mind, not until its corners began to turn white like the sand, like the stars.  His own corners, lingering in shadow, mirrored hers.

            Her neck arched.   _Yes.  Gods, yes._

            “Rey,” he rasped.  “Let me hear.”  

            By the time Rey’s senses returned to the cliff above the sea, Kylo’s gaze seemed permanently fixed on her flushed, lightly-freckled features.

            Only he didn’t slow down.

            Rey writhed, overstimulated; this was where _she_ usually stopped. “Ben,” she pleaded.

            She felt his heart leap.  And although he stiffened further, everywhere, his eyes remained transfixed.  “ _More_ ,” he reassured her, pleading in his own way.

            Rey’s hand crept into Ben’s hair as he kept going, his fingers working over her, through her, until she finished again. Then once more. And one more time after that, in immediate succession. The secondary crests were shorter, sharper, but the sounds she made in their throes moved from shocked transcendence into what could only be described as incredulous, delirious laughter. 

            Her reaction mystified him at first. Then, somewhere in the middle of it, Ben’s lips quirked against Rey’s neck — an expression he’d absorbed from her, perhaps, or else it was an old one. Ill-used. Underwater. But still there.

            Rey _did_ light up all over.

            She laughed, and he smiled, and it hurt, because she wouldn’t — because he couldn’t — _Ben, it’s too much. Please. Ben._

            He surrendered.  Rolled to his back. Gathered Rey against the bulk of his side after a long, searching hesitation.

            She didn’t move.  Didn’t stir.  

            Ben let her breathe; he had to do the same. Carried off by connection, he felt as if he’d climaxed right along with her. 

             _From this?_

             ** _T_** _his._

            Except, obviously, he hadn’t.

            “Can ... I ... do something about that?” Curiously, drowsily, Rey's bare thigh moved against his broadly-encased one.

            “ _No!_ ”  Kylo practically jumped, far more vehemently than either of them expected.  “No,” he modified, swallowing, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

            “Why not?”

            His arm merely tightened around her back.

            The  _just you_ part of their bargain hadn’t only been for her.

            “You’re afraid you’ll turn.” Utterly drained, Rey sounded light-headed. She’d always been able to haul Kylo’s fears from the fathomless sea inside of him, like it was second nature. Like the Force was with her. Like she _was_ the Force. “ _I_ didn’t turn,” she mumbled. “I told you, it doesn’t work like that.”

            “I know.” The arm tightened further. “Rest.” Kylo felt the exact moment Rey drifted asleep against him; it happened so fast that he wondered if “rest” had fallen over her like the subliminal mind-tricks they’d both feared long ago. How many nights had she gone without proper sleep?

            How many had _he?_

            She shivered.

            Stiffly, tentatively, Kylo pulled the unoccupied half of his cloak over her. He definitely couldn’t lose control, not when it was already tenuous at best.  

            But he was _not_ going to wake her up.  

            Rey’s peaceful features threatened to split him in half, right there beside the guttering bonfire. Echoes passed through the threatened breach.

             _Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose._

             ** _After all this time, she still doesn’t understand that she belongs to you._**

            His eyelids felt heavy. Heavier than they had in months, years. **_Sodding For_** _ce-bond_ , Kylo thought, drifting off.

 

***

 

            At the edge of the builder’s meadow, half-buried beneath months of overgrowth, a dim red light sputtered to life.  

            It blinked, then held steady.

            In the dead of night, the surrounding flowers — swaying, voiceless — proved the only witnesses to the First Order beacon’s reactivation.

            

            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Chapter moodboard is [here](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com/post/176100288650/burn-the-boats-chapter-22-ellipses).
> 
> (2) We last saw that tricksy beacon in [Chapter 17](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13699128/chapters/32448228).
> 
> (3) This chapter's title comes from astronomy — wherein “celestial objects, in periodic orbits around other celestial objects, trace out ellipses.” (Thanks for that handy definition, internet!) The saga of integrating nature/natural-world motifs via BTB’s chapter titles continues. :p
> 
> (4) I post notes about fic-updates on my [Tumblr](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com). I’m currently able to post one BTB chapter-jam per month; it’s definitely not my posting-preference, but alas, _c’est la vie_. Booooooooo @ real life. Thank you for your patience, dear readers! Your affectionate comments always lift my scribble-heart!
> 
> I'll be around [Tumblr](https://eek-a-tron.tumblr.com); come say hello, ask me about pie and/or space!


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